


Paper Phoenix

by tabbycat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bellatrix is the new Dark Lord, F/M, Post-Battle of Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2020-03-09 19:58:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18924028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabbycat/pseuds/tabbycat
Summary: In 1979, Regulus Black is saved from certain death.Twenty years later, he comes to in a world that’s moved on, and yet hasn’t moved on at all. His cousin, Bellatrix, rules the wizarding world with an iron grip. The opposition to her is struggling. Regulus once again has to pick a side, pick a cousin, pick what he thinks is right.He didn’t plan for any of this. He didn’t plan to fall in love.





	1. 1979

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta, Rachael, and thanks to the people that encouraged me to adapt a one-shot into a longer fic.
> 
> This is loosely based on the same premise as the one-shot I wrote for a fest, Centuries. It begins in the same place, at least, with Regulus, and it has the same core pairing and some of the same themes. There’s going to be a bit of family magic, a bit of romance, and a bit of Ron the good friend. 
> 
> For anyone who reads my other stuff: I am definitely finishing it.

_September, 1979_

Andromeda Black, even after all this time, still thinks of herself by the name of Black. She’s been married for going on seven years now, yes, and she took Ted’s name at the first possible moment. Andromeda Tonks, Dromeda for short, never Annie. But, somehow, it seems that no matter what it is that she is legally called, she remains a Black. No matter that she has no loyalty left to the family, save to Sirius, and no matter that she swore never to become embroiled in their schemes or their dramatics again, she is still firmly and unmistakably a Black. It isn’t what she wants, or she doesn’t think that it is. It is merely that she is.

And so she sits in the rocking chair in her cottage, her and Ted’s cottage, the rocking chair that she fed Nymphadora in. Dora, as Ted calls her, is six now, and doesn’t need to be rocked to sleep any longer, but the chair remains. Uncle Alphard had sent it to Andromeda and Ted when she’d had the baby. Uncle Alphard, who also remained a Black, despite having been cast from the tree like she had been.

Andromeda has never liked shortening her daughter’s name.

In Andromeda’s hand is a piece of parchment, inscribed with a note in a neat, slanting handwriting. It isn’t a handwriting Andromeda recognises. That doesn’t mean much. It isn’t as though many people write to Andromeda. But this note concerns a specific individual, and it isn’t his writing - no, she’d recognise the handwriting of her little cousin even though she hasn’t seen him in years. 

So, allegedly, Regulus Black is in trouble, and it is Andromeda that can save him.

 

_June, 1979_

 

“You’re Regulus Black.”

Regulus makes for his wand, such were the times that he lived in, but the witch in front of him did not appear to be a threat. Still, his hand remains in the pocket of his robes as he assessed the situation. He has not lived as long as he has in the employ of the Dark Lord without knowing how to handle himself. They are in the centre of Diagon Alley, and, although the volume of shoppers was reducing every day, there is enough traffic that he feels reasonably safe.

“I am.”

There is little to no point in denying it. He is distinctive, and he wears the family crest on the clasp of his cloak. She has nothing that suggested who it is that she is - her robes and cloak were plain but of decent quality, the cloak pinned with a brooch of gold and black, her hair held back in a style worn by many witches. By her look he could not pin her to any particular family, perhaps one of the many Shacklebolt cousins or a distantly related Selwyn or Shafiq. He knew the most of them, and so, he did not think that she was one of those. 

“You’ll need these in a few months, I think.”

She holds out a collection of items in her hand, a golden necklace on a long, thin chain, a piece of parchment folded into an origami phoenix, and a vial of a softly shimmering pink potion.

“I do not foresee needing any of that.”

“No, were you any good at Divination in school? I wasn’t.”

“I did not take the subject.”

“It’s either incredibly fraudulent, or the most important thing,” says the witch, flicking her wand and sending the items skimming into his pocket. “Never been sure which. Good luck, Regulus Black.”

She twists on the spot and is gone, and Regulus is left in the street with her strange collection of items and the sense that he had entirely missed something. He throws the items in the nearest bin, and sets off to complete his shopping. The Dark Lord awaits, and, he has certain things he wishes to discover before then. A book on Horcruxes and blood magic take their place in his pocket.

The next morning, as he crawls into bed, reaching for a vial of something for the lingering pain after a ferocious Cruciatus, he sees those things again. They sit on his bedside table, as if it was he that had placed them there. He swipes them into the bin once more.

 

_August, 1979_

Regulus cannot remember the last time that he was able to sleep. On the days he can, he wakes in the middle of the night, sweat plastered to his forehead and a sense of foreboding in his mind. The parchment phoenix returns every time he gets rid of it, that and the necklace and the vial of potion. He has thrown them, Vanished them, used all manner of blasting spells, asked Kreacher to remove the items, tried spells he found in the darker books in the house, but they return every time. 

He wonders frequently if it is a sign of his impending madness, because, certainly, it feels that way. 

It is a curse from Voldemort, perhaps, the name he uses only in his head and not out loud. You-Know-Who, the name that he is permitted to use aloud, the man who he had once called the Dark Lord. The clippings bearing the name, and the title He Who Must Not Be Named, stare down at him from the walls of his bedroom. He cannot remove them; that would give away his plans. He cannot look at them. They remind him of the terrible things he has done.

And the parchment phoenix and the vial of potion and the little, golden chain remind him of something, too, except he cannot remember exactly what that something may be. So they remind him of fear, and of a horrible glimpse of a future. Divination. He had not taken Divination, and yet, the subject seems somehow to be of importance, even if he cannot remember why.

He lies in bed for another hour, perfectly still, his mind full of nothing except for Horcruxes and death. And Kreacher, sobbing in his cupboard in the kitchen. And the restlessness grows in his feet and his hands, as if he cannot wait another second longer to act.

He gets up. Carefully, with every movement measured and calm, he opens his desk drawer and he removes three things - a note, a newspaper clipping, and a locket. The note he tucks into the locket, barely sparing a glance for the short paper that took him several hours to write. The locket, in turn, goes into the pocket of his robes. And the clipping goes on the wall, alongside the others.

Head-Boy Tom Riddle, it reads, wins European prize in Transfiguration.

Tom Riddle’s handsome face smiles out at him from the photograph, the smile of a boy who knows that he is handsome. Alongside him pose Professors Slughorn and Dumbledore, and the old Headmaster, Professor Dippet. Only Dumbledore does not look as if he is pleased to be there. Regulus wonders what, if anything, he knew.

The text in the article goes on, to cover the prestigious nature of the prize, outline Tom Riddle’s other accomplishments, and draw a comparison to Dumbledore himself. But that is not the importance here. It is the link. Regulus wonders if anyone else has drawn it, or if this little display of his will cause anyone to. But that would overstate his own importance. He knows how little his role is in all of this. He knows that his role is to fail.

It is the last day of August, 1979, and Regulus Black will die in September. He merely hopes it will help.

 

_September, 1979_

He is dying. Of that Regulus is certain. The world is dark, and he does not appear to be on a rocky island any more but some sort of strange, moving platform suspended over an ocean, and he is so, incredibly thirsty. His head feels as if it is preparing itself to burst open, or perhaps to fall in on itself. He cannot tell. He can only assume that this is death.

It is not as if Regulus Black had ever had a desire to live forever.

As a child, he had wished for a lot of things, as a child does. For a racing broom that was faster than his brother’s. For Puddlemere United to win the Quidditch League. To play Quidditch for Slytherin House and then for the England team.

Now that he thinks about it, as he floats somewhere above a dark sea, rather too many of Regulus’ childhood dreams had been based around Quidditch. That, perhaps, and besting his brother.

He feels as if he may be flying on a broomstick. Perhaps he is. Had he brought his? He sees his mother shouting at Sirius. He does not know if they are real. They must be.

And most of his dreams have come pass, Regulus thinks, and Sirius is no longer a concern, and yet, none of it had made Regulus happy. He has developed more worldly desires, after all, and in pursuit of those he has allowed the Dark Lord to eclipse Quidditch and he has taken the Dark Mark. And that, he supposes, was where he had began to walk this path that has lead him to staring his own death in the face. 

Regulus floats back to the earth and he remembers what it is he has to do. Drink. That is what he has attempted to impress on himself. That he should drink. But the potion will kill him.

Regulus had never wanted to live forever, no, but he had wished to live longer than this. 

“I do not want to die,” he says, and he drinks.

His father is there now. 

“I am disappointed in you,” he says, and it isn’t to Regulus he speaks, but to Sirius, and Sirius is four, and he’s cowering away behind a desk, but their father drags him out. Regulus shrinks into the shadows. He’s hiding behind the potion, so he drinks again. And he watches the scene play out, one that he did not know he remembered, but there is enough of a familiarity in it to know that it likely happened.

The spectre of his mother began to cast curses wildly at a memory version of his brother. He began to shout to the shade of his mother to leave his brother be, reaching his hand into his pocket for his wand, but his hand grasped only at cold metal and cold glass and a piece of parchment. He did not much care where it was that he went, except for that it not be here.

Regulus tries to knock down his mother, but she doesn’t fall. He curses at his father, and the curse seems to pass right through him and rebound against a wall, but that cannot be possible. He shouts instead, brushing his hair which is somehow damp back from his face, screaming at his mother and his father and at Sirius. His knees are damp, and there’s blood on his elbow, but he shouts and he screams and he thinks his mouth tastes of the dark.

“You cannot hurt him!” he shouts. “Leave Sirius be!” But they do not stop, and Regulus remembers that they are not real. This is not happening. He is in a cave, and Sirius has run away, and Regulus is alone.

“It’s going to be alright,” says a voice, and it isn’t his mother or his father or Sirius but Andromeda.

“I am sorry,” he says, to Andromeda’s shade, for she cannot be real either. “Sorry. I let them do it. I let them hurt you.”

His mother and father seem to hang back, and he looks around for Sirius, but he has disappeared. He will be back, Regulus decides, and he will wait for him before he dies.

“Water,” he croaks. “I need water.” He’s on the floor, he realises, and his legs are not working, so he crawls in the direction that comes to his head. There’s water, and there’s more screaming, and he does not immediately link the two. Sirius will be here soon, he thinks, Sirius will be here soon and then he can die.

“Fucking bollocks,” says Andromeda’s voice, and then there is a burst of fire and then there is nothing.

 

_October, 1979_

Andromeda thinks she’s done it.

Ted’s helped her, Ted who’s always been there for her in one way or another, Ted who, instead of asking questions, raises an eyebrow and gets on with the task at hand. He asks questions later, of course, mostly of the ‘why’ sort.

“I don’t know,” Andromeda can only answer to most of them. “He’s my cousin. He’s trying to escape them, like I did.”

Ted eyes the Mark on his arm, dark and twisted and gently pulsating, the mark of everything she’s tried to run from. 

“Why, though?” he asks. “Why’s he leaving now? He threw his wand in with them, so why did he want to leave so soon?”

“I don’t know,” is all Andromeda can say.

She has ideas, but they’re so half-baked and confused that she can’t even begin to explain them to Ted. He understands, or he says he does. He disappears off upstairs, because Nymphadora will wake soon, and somebody has to be awake with her to pour breakfast cereal and to answer the thousand questions that she has. This leaves Andromeda alone in the hastily-built cellar, well, alone except for her cousin. He sleeps, unaware of everything she’s done for him. The spell she’s used is ancient, it’s effects badly documented at best, or at least in the sources she was able to find. It’s blood magic, technically. It may do what it promised, it may do something entirely else if they are unlucky.

Andromeda hopes it’s worth it.

Regulus is only eighteen, and that’s far too young to die. Andromeda pulls the rocking chair closer to the bed he lies on, in a sort of magical stasis until his danger passes, and she thinks of what she would do if this were Nymphadora. It’s bad enough that it is him, the younger cousin she always liked, but who had always been far too eager to listen to his parents. Sirius had been different, made of fire. She’d hoped Regulus would take her path, not his brother’s, and not Narcissa’s, and certainly not that of Bellatrix. If anyone would ruin the family, it would be Bellatrix. Their parents had always assumed Sirius, but Andromeda thought not.

She tucks the little things he’d had in the cave in with him. She’s used the potion, as instructed, but she’s kept the little paper phoenix and the golden necklace. She doesn’t understand the significance of these things, the phoenix being blank and the necklace not the substitute for the one that Regulus had intended to destroy, but she keeps them anyway. They’re his. She adds the thing, which is the only way she can bring herself to refer to it, to a box underneath his resting place. And she adds something of her own - her only possession from her life as a Black. The brooch glistens on his robes, a thestral cut from onyx, a chip in it’s tail. Perhaps he needs it more than she does, in his future.

If he gets one, Andromeda thinks. But she has done what she can.

There’s shrieking from upstairs, but the happy sort. Ted will be playing the game with the talking milk bottles again, the one Andromeda hates because of the mess and the noise it inevitably creates, and the way it always leaves Nymphadora overexcited just as Ted leaves for work and she, inevitably, has to deal with the consequences.

But today, as she walks up the stairs from the new cellar, charming them closed as she exits the door into the hall, waiting for the protective enchantments upon them to make the door fade back into the wall and to protect Regulus in his rest, she feels the urge to join her husband and her daughter. So instead of sighing and levitating a cloth to clear the mess, she flicks her wand at the box of cereal instead, and makes it sing in a deep voice. Nymphadora turns in her chair, giggling.

“Mummy! I didn’t know you could do this game!”

“Mummy can do all sorts of things,” Andromeda replies. Ted grins, his eyes dark-ringed from the lack of sleep, his hair standing on end just as he always did. He’s wearing his work robes, crumpled from his lack of prowess at charms to straighten them out. Nymphadora wears lime-green pyjamas, her hair a violent shade of pink. Both of them wear matching wide grins, even if Ted’s face has a touch of sadness, too. 

“Like what?”

“This,” says Andromeda, and the spoons begin an elaborate dance routine choreographed by her wand. Nymphadora screams with excitement and begins to request moves for the spoons to do. Andromeda smiles along with her husband and her daughter, but she feels the twinge in her arm where she completed the ritual that would, if it worked as it should, save her cousin. She’d given something of herself to the cause. She merely hoped that it would be worth it.


	2. Kibbern Place

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, as always, to my lovely beta Rachael!

_April, 2000_

It’s raining. Hermione brushes her wet fringe from her face twice, three times, but she can’t risk an Impervious. This is a Muggle area, and the Trace will notice it. And she might not be able to escape them quickly enough, when they come. 

Just to be sure, her hand reaches in to check the broomstick in her beaded bag. She’s never liked flying, but they can’t trace it. If anything goes wrong, she has a route out of here.

From across the street, Ron winks at her. He’s Polyjuiced as a Muggle man from a supermarket in Manchester, wearing clothes Hermione had stolen from the clothing aisles while Ron got the hairs. She wears the face and body of the shelf-stacker. It’s the last of their stock of Polyjuice. 

Ron winks again. She knows what he means. They’ve been doing this so long that they communicate mainly through little winks and gestures and sentences spoken in a half-code. To survive as long as they have, they’ve had to adapt.

There’s times Hermione hasn’t been sure that the cost is worth it.

Ron continues on, and Hermione follows. She walks as casually as she can down the street. Anyone could be watching from the flats that rise up on both sides of the road, but they’re disguised, and anyone watching is likely a bored Muggle, not anyone that might want to track them. Ron stops on the corner and nods to her. Carefully, checking once, twice, three times, Hermione crosses the street, darting to the safety of the black dustbin Ron’s crouched behind. 

“Can’t see anyone,” he says. “But then, we’ve said that before.”

“Yeah.” It isn’t worth dwelling on that. Everyone they’ve lost chose to fight this war, everyone they’ve lost fought with the full knowledge that they might die for it. It doesn’t make it any better. Ron makes a point of talking about those they’ve lost - his family, all eight of them, so it burns more for him, maybe - but Hermione can’t bear to. She used to think they’d be remembered when they’d won, or that was how she justified it, but now she’s not even sure they’ll win.

“Ready?” Ron asks. He reaches for her hand and squeezes it in reassurance. She squeezes back. They’re still here, for however much longer. “Might be there.”

“Might be.” She drops his hand, and pulls Harry’s Invisibility Cloak over the two of them. It barely covers them. Might not be, she wants to say. But doesn’t.

They’ve heard a rumour that Minerva McGonagall was seen here recently, somewhere in the mazes and warrens of the vast council estate. It’s unlikely - witches and wizards are banned from living in amongst Muggles, for one thing, and it’s not an area that holds any significance for her or anyone else in the shattered remains of the Order of the Phoenix. But they’ve run out of any other leads, or anything else to do that might be of use, so here they are. A sign of desperation perhaps, them looking for someone who other rumours have suggested is dead, or defected, or merely disappeared. 

Ron takes her hand and they begin to walk the area, keeping an eye out for anything strange or unusual, any flare of magic. If Minerva’s sensible, she won’t be using magic. They’ve been careful not to, haven’t cast a spell in months, in fact, even to the point where they’d taken the Tube here. That meant being seen on CCTV, but as far as they know, the other side doesn’t monitor that.

They need to make more Polyjuice, she thinks, which means finding the ingredients. She has about half of them, and most of the rest she can forage for, and that only leaves a couple that she’d have to buy. Hopefully Slughorn hasn’t been shut down yet. She can’t walk into a shop; not with all of them bearing a poster with her face. Undesirable Number One. And Ron, never far from her side, sharing space on almost every shop as Undesirable Number Two.

But she has to concentrate. If she gets distracted now, they could be killed. Because, of course, as they’ve discussed at length, this could be a trap. It could be Bellatrix, or the Minister, or the Aurors, or the Masters of Death, spreading their own rumours to lure them in. 

Ron squeezes her hand, and she squeezes back. Focus. Look. Don’t be caught out.

“Try to survive until tomorrow,” says Ron, as if he knows what she’s thinking.

There’s a noise behind them, and both of them spin on the spot towards it, pulling their wands from their jackets. She’s ready to fire, but Ron puts a hand on her arm in warning.

“Could be a bird,” he whispers, his voice barely audible even right by her ear.

“Fox,” she suggests, equally quietly, but she knows it isn’t. And from the look in his eyes, so does he.

A woman steps out from a doorway into a block of flats, the door closing softly behind her. She wears a jumper and jeans, much like they do, but her hair is twisted up into a complex, clearly wizarding style, secured with a golden clip of a phoenix. Not only is that a uniquely magical animal, but it flutters even though there is no wind. Charmed objects don’t set off the Trace, Hermione knows. She’s a witch, and this is how she’s signalling it.

She steps forward once again, and the streetlights illuminate her face, and Ron goes to cast a spell. Because she looks almost exactly like Bellatrix. Her face has the same beauty, and the same hard, sharp angles Bellatrix had had before she’d changed herself. She stands with her hands in her pockets, likely a hand in her wand, and she twitches her foot as she waits.

“Could it be?” she asks.

“Dunno,” Ron replies. “Isn’t Minerva.”

They’re using words sparingly, but it doesn’t seem like the woman can hear them.

“She has a sister,” says Hermione, thinking. “One that she’s supposed to look like, as well as the other one.”

“Could be,” Ron replies. He looks around, trying not to disturb the Cloak, which is slightly too small for the two of them and risks showing their feet. He shrugs, which means he thinks it could be a trap.

“I don’t think it is.” Hermione can’t be sure, but it doesn’t feel like a trap to her. And she’s walked into enough of those to know what one looks like. “I think it’s her, at least.” 

Ron shrugs again.

“Absolutely nothing can go wrong here,” he mutters. “Fuck this.” And he removes the Cloak from himself in one swoop, leaving Hermione covered. Of course she sweeps it from herself too, stuffing it into her bag and following him as he approaches the woman in the doorway. If she’s surprised by the sudden appearance of a dark-haired man brandishing a wand, in a patched, hand-knitted jumper with an F on the front, she doesn’t show it. Instead she raises her own wand.

“You may mistake me for my sister,” she says, “but I am not her.”

“Your sister?” asks Ron, and his face softens an inch, but he doesn’t lower his wand even slightly. Hermione tightens her grip on hers. There could be anything at play here; Polyjuice, Charms, Transfiguration, old fashioned trickery. There could be nobody here at all, just a shade, like from the locket Horcrux. 

“My sister. I cannot even speak her name, but she causes most of the problems these days, there’s no doubt about that. Where there was trouble, my sister could always find it. She ran away to join a young half-blood, and he caused trouble, and, now she takes his role. It wasn’t a surprise to me, I don’t think. But it isn’t safe to talk of these things out of doors.”

“Isn’t safe to follow you inside.” Ron’s shoulders clench. He’s not going to not fight her. But he’s not going to follow her easily. “Show us why we can trust you,” he demands. “Give us a good reason. Two.”

“You’re right not to trust me,” says Andromeda Tonks, because that’s who this must be - it can’t be Narcissa Malfoy, and Bellatrix only has that one other sister. “In these times, it’s wise to trust nobody.” She steps closer to them, and Ron twitches as she does so, and lowers her voice. “I can tell you that you’re looking for Minerva McGonagall, and you’ve heard rumours pointing you to here. I can tell you information about you only Minerva could have told me. And you could tell me that I could still be a threat, that you still don’t want to trust me. That’s up to you.” She indicates the stairwell behind her, steps forward, and hands a piece of paper to Hermione, who’s come up alongside Ron. “You’ll need that.”

Andromeda, if that’s who she is, goes into the door and begins to walk up the concrete stairs. Hermione unfolds the paper in her hand. It’s an address, for a flat in the block behind them.

I, Andromeda Black, am the Secret Keeper for Number Thirty-Seven, Kibbern Place. I grant you access.

“We need to go somewhere,” she says. “We’ve been waving wands outside long enough.”

Ron stuffs his into his pocket, and stalks away five or six steps from the door. He shrugs again, looking at his scuffed trainers. 

“Come on, it’s worth a go.”

“Is it?” he asks. “Isn’t something like this how we lost Fred?”

The jumper should have been a sign, she realises. Fred’s jumper, and Fred died in an ambush. 

“Sorry.”

“Wasn’t you that killed him.”

No, but she’d thought they should go on then, and it’d been wrong. Ron kicks a stone, and sits himself down on a wall of a wheelie bin store, underneath a sign reminding people not to flytip.

“Can’t lose you,” he says.

“Can’t lose you, either.” She walks over, sitting beside him, putting her arm around his shoulder. “We’re going to survive until tomorrow, remember.”

“Yeah.” Ron’s still looking at his trainers, less than convinced. “Well, you’re right. Can’t sit out here. Let me see that paper, if it’s what I think it is, I won’t be able to get in without it.”

“You’re coming?”

“Yeah, course. I trust you, don’t I?”

She hands him the paper and puts her head on his shoulder. “Together.”

“Together.”

They go into the flats, up the stairs, which smell strongly of urine, and onto the second floor balcony. A narrow corridor runs between the flats on one side, each with their regulation doors of blue and red, and the open air on the other, separated from a fall by an iron railing. Hermione checks her broomstick once more. Ron positions himself between her and the flats.

Number thirty-seven seems as ordinary as the rest of them, a red door, the regulation letterbox, brass numbers nailed into the door. A single plant pot sits by the door, housing two half-dead clumps of begonias. 

Ron knocks.

They’re almost pulled into the flat. It at least smells fresh and clean, but it’s no more inspiring than the outside of the blocks. The walls are covered with woodchip wallpaper in a scuffed shade of cream, and the floor is black and white linoleum. Ron inches down the narrow hallway ahead of Hermione, following the woman who must be Andromeda. He looks back at Hermione, pausing slightly before carrying on. It feels more like a trap than it did.

They arrive into a kitchen, once again neat and clean but worn and dated.

“Tea?” she asks. “I’ll make three cups.”

She joins them at the table with the three mugs, carried on a tray where they once might have been by magic. The yellow mug is pushed to Hermione. Hermione wants to tap it with her wand, to check for anything untoward, but she can’t risk a spell, so instead she pulls a tiny glass jar from her bag and puts in a pinch of the powder inside. Nothing happens; it’s safe to drink. So she drinks.

“Nice to see you don’t trust me,” says the woman. “That’s wise in of itself. Andromeda Black.”

“Andromeda Tonks,” says Ron, raising an eyebrow. 

“I was. And I am, I suppose. Names are complicated, and I go by the one that suits me best at any given time. It’s only a recent convention for a witch to take her husband’s name. Copied from Muggles, although if you tell that to a member of my family they’d sooner curse you than admit it. I took the name to escape them, and I didn’t manage it, with or without their cursed name.”

“So why have you taken it back?” Hermione can’t help but ask.

“Necessity.”

Ron raises the eyebrow again. He drinks too, copying Hermione. Hermione puts her mug down.

“Why did you contact us?”

“Because you can help us, in the end. There’s other reasons too, reasons best known to somebody else, I wanted to help you. Not that what I want you to do won’t be dangerous.”

“Danger is my middle name,” says Ron. “Or should be. I find enough of it, and it’d be a damn sight better than Bilius.”

Ron has never understood the occasion for a joke. And it’s like he feels like he has to be all of his family, all rolled into one, these days. 

“You said you had information,” says Hermione. 

“Some.” Andromeda puts her own mug down and folds her arms. Her resemblance to her sister comes and goes. She’s definitely softer, with an air of sadness where Bellatrix has anger. The robes she wears are, at a closer glance, faded and patched by hand. Her hair is twisted and pinned up, but inexpertly, like she hasn’t had much practice at doing it without magic. So she has the Trace on her, too. “Have you heard from my daughter?”

“Not for a year.”

Andromeda visibly stiffens. 

“Perhaps I'm silly for holding out hope,” she says. “It’s been a year. But when do I stop hoping, I wonder?”

Hermione feels as though they can’t ask any more questions, not now, so she sips at her tea. Andromeda, however, seems to rally quickly.

“But I promised you information. I will need you to make an Oath. I don’t wish to harm you, but I have somebody I need to protect.”

Hermione and Ron look at each other. Ron nods, just a fraction of an inch. Hermione relaxes, slightly.

“Write down the wording before we begin,” she says. “I’m not agreeing to anything I’ve not seen in advance.”

Andromeda gives them a half-smile. “Clever again,” she says, and stands up. She goes to the door and calls out into the hallway. “Minerva? A moment?”

Minerva McGonagall points her wand at Ron and Hermione the moment she enters the room. 

“Prove who you are,” she says. “I’m not taking chances.”

Once they’ve proved it to her satisfaction, she joins them at the table. Minerva doesn’t take tea from Andromeda, but pours a glass of water from the sink. She looks older than when Hermione saw her last, seven or eight months before. She wears a t-shirt, of all things, and jeans, and looks as if she’s on edge. 

“Will you serve as our bonder?” Andromeda asks. “I’m asking them to make the same oath that you have.”

“Certainly.”

And so they kneel on the linoleum, the same black and white as in the hallway, and they promise to one another that they will not seek to cause the other harm, or harm to the secret she will show them, or speak of it to one who may wish to do them harm. Ron grips Andromeda’s left hand, Hermione takes a weaker hold of her right. He narrows his eyes and hesitates slightly before each promise he makes, but he makes them, and so does Hermione. Minerva’s magic wraps them together, and Hermione is convinced this isn’t a trap, at least, but it’s something that could go terribly wrong, all the same.

“Do you wish to tell them, or shall I?” Andromeda asks, straightening up, when all is done.

“I think it’s your story,” Minerva says. 

“Perhaps we should show them.”

Andromeda leaves the room, and Hermione takes a seat at the table again. Ron lurks between the cooker and the table, tapping his feet against the floor. 

“I’m sorry for my abruptness when I first saw you,” Minerva says. “In these times, you cannot be too careful. I’m pleased to see you alive.”

“And you, Professor.” 

Ron is about to say something, too, but he stops when Andromeda returns to the room, trailing someone behind her. 

“How?” he asks.

The person is supposed to be dead, so it seems like a reasonable question. Again, it could be clever charmwork, or Polyjuice, but Hermione doesn’t think it is. It’s Regulus Black, who died in 1979, and that seems somehow obvious, even though she’s only ever seen photographs of him.

“You're all aware that Regulus is my cousin,” Andromeda begins, one hand on her cousin’s shoulder as she speaks. “And that we lost contact when I left the family. I received word that he was in danger, in 1979, and felt compelled to act. There was little I could do but to save his life and keep him safe from harm. Questions would have been asked, he had made several enemies already, by that time, and I had a family to protect.” 

She pauses.

“I sent a letter to his mother to say that he was dead, and a decoy body. Transfiguration was my favourite subject in school. I was later informed that the family tapestry had shown he was dead. They believed my ruse.”

“It updates the births and deaths automatically,” Hermione says. “He should have been dead.”

“It used to. Like many things in that house, the clever enchantments have decayed, and nobody in the family retains the ability to fix it. But, of course, they were too proud to admit such a thing. I suspect Auntie Walburga was updating it herself until her death. After that, I doubt anyone has bothered at all.”

“Why now?” Hermione asks. “Why not before?”

“May I speak?” he asks. “You talk of me as if I am not here.”

“Go ahead,” says Ron.

“And you are?”

“Ron. Ron Weasley. Blood traitor,” he says, proudly, “and rebel, and future Keeper for the Chudley Cannons.”

“Andromeda has told me a little,” Regulus begins, sitting tall and proud as he speaks. Hermione thinks he looks pale, although perhaps that’s his skin tone, or the light in the room, and thin. He’s handsome, nevertheless. He’s always been described to her as not quite on Sirius’ level, but Hermione’s not sure that’s true. A different life, before he’d almost died, and he would have been beautiful. Was still, maybe.

But that wasn’t what they are here for, to wonder if Regulus was better looking than his brother. She had to listen to what he had to say. 

“I know some of your history,” he continues. “Not enough, but some. I do not claim to know what it is you have done, but I have some idea of it. And so I wish to stand with you. I did what I did against him, and I have been warned that I cannot say the name, in order to end him and to end his thinking. It seems that I succeeded in neither, and so I look to help with this.”

He speaks formally, slightly stilted with lack of speaking maybe, looking around the room at each of them in turn with a practiced air of confidence to him as he says his piece. But he isn’t, though, she realises. There’s something about the way he stands, maybe, or something else, that gives away his unease. 

“We’re glad to have you,” says Ron, holding out his hand. “Thanks, mate. I know you say you didn’t succeed, but you did something. It’s better than nothing.”

“That is what one can hope,” says Regulus, accepting his hand. The two men shake, the dark-haired, skinny eighteen-year-old and the taller, broader ginger. But they both have the same stretched, weary look to them, if for different reasons. “You must be Hermione Granger,” he continues, turning to her. “A pleasure.” Instead of holding out his hand to her, he inclines his head. “May we go to the living room? I find I cannot stand for long, at present.”

They relocate, and Andromeda brings fresh mugs of tea. Regulus settles into an armchair. He’s still pale in here, contrasting with his dark hair and dark eyes.

“It was not safe for me to live,” he says, slowly. He gives the impression that he thinks each of his words through carefully before he says them. “Like Andromeda says, I had made enemies. If I had remained, the Dark Lord may have discovered what it was I had done. I am no master Occlumens. I did not want to die that night, and yet it was the only option I seemed to have. If not for Andromeda and Kreacher, I surely would have.”

Ron slouches against the wall, listening closely. Andromeda perches on the edge of the opposite armchair, as if nervous. Minerva removes a newspaper from a side-table, and begins to fill out the crossword. Hermione, on the sofa alongside Minerva, isn’t sure what to make of any of this. He must tell the truth. He’s here.

“How did you know to go there?” she asks Andromeda.

“That’s what I thought you’d know. I was left a letter. And Regulus says someone spoke with him, a few months prior to his death. Their description matches yours.”

“She, or you, if it was you that did so, left me with these,” he says, removing a handful of items from his pocket. She looks at what he holds out; an origami bird, a phoenix perhaps, a golden necklace, and a black brooch. 

“I don’t know anything about them,” she admits.

“I suppose that is unimportant,” he says, replacing them into his pocket. “What matters is what we must do next.”

“And that is?” Ron pipes up from his corner. “Kill her? Because we think she’s immortal. Not what he had. Not what you fought before, Regulus. Some other means.”

“Yes. And that was why I decided it was time.” Andromeda looks almost sad at this. “I’ve done what research I can, despite being somewhat of a persona non grata almost everywhere in wizarding society. There’s something only Regulus, and I, can help with.”

“Family magics,” says Minerva, putting down her pen. “That’s what you think this is.”

“Mum says nobody ever uses those anymore. They’re dangerous. They take just as much from the person that casts them as they do from anyone else.” Ron slides down the wall to sit on the floor. “Mum used to say.”

“I have lost my husband,” says Andromeda, standing herself up as if about to make a speech. “I have lost my sisters, many years ago now. I do not know where my daughter is - perhaps she’s lost as well. I cannot lose much more.”

“Andromeda has done enough research, as have I, to understand what it is we must do. And she is prepared to take the risks associated with it,” says Minerva. 

“And I,” Regulus adds. “My former life is lost to me. I may not have been able to strike much of a blow against the previous Dark Lord, but I will do what I can to end the menace of this one.”

“What do you want from us?” Ron asks. “We’re not family, we can’t do anything. Well,” he says, shrugging, “a Black was disowned for marrying my grandfather, so if I can do anything, I will, but I don’t think it’s close enough a blood link.”

“I don’t understand.” Hermione’s been trying to work it out as they go along, trying to remember every obscure bit of magic she’s ever learnt. She’s read a lot of strange books over her years in the magical world, but she’s never read anything that sounds like it could be this. Even Ron knows. Intrinsic privilege once again.

“Family magic,” says Regulus, speaking first, the rest of them all about to also explain. “Each family holds their own magics. They can use these to control other family members, if they know the rituals, and to borrow power from them, and for all sorts of deeds. All of them have their uses, of course, but they can be used for dark as well as for good. It is difficult to explain without delving into the lore of it. Perhaps Andromeda can lend you a book, if you like to read?”

“She’ll take all the books you’ve got,” mutters Ron.

“Thank you,” says Hermione. “Maybe I’ll read the book, and let you know if I have any questions.”

“She’ll have hundreds,” mutters Ron. 

“Shut up, Ron.”

He sticks his tongue out.

Talk turns to other subjects, and Hermione wanders off in search of the toilet. She’s still trying to shake off the feeling that this could all be a trap; and, judging by the way Ron looks when she leaves his line of site, he is, too. But it seems safe. Yes, they’ve thought that before, but it feels different this time. It feels like they finally have a plan.

She’s startled by someone in the hallway when she exits the toilet, and backs up against the wall, drawing her wand. It’s Regulus, holding out a book.

“I apologise,” he says. “I did not mean to make you nervous.”

“It’s fine,” she says. “Just reflexes. Sorry.”

“It is the book on the family magics. Or the best one Andromeda could find, at any rate. The best ones are in the libraries of the oldest families, and the Black one would be of most use. However, that is inaccessible to us, and so we must make do. I have taken the liberty of passing to you my own notes on how the Black family has used these magics in the past, if they may be of use to you.”

“Thanks,” she says.

The hallway is narrow, and they’re very close to one another. Hermione can see the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes, and the scar on the tip of his nose, and, if she reached out, she’d be able to feel the lines of his face. For some reason she has the compulsion to do that. But she ignores it, because it’d be ridiculous to do that.

“Thanks,” she says again, instead. “I’ll read it right away.”


	3. Those Left

“Nymphadora, my darling, I have your dinner.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Now come on, my dear. You have to eat. You have to preserve your strength.”

“For what?” Tonks pulls herself up from the bed, with some difficulty, and turns herself around to face the speaker. Auntie Cissa, as she demands to be called, levitates a tray in front of her in the doorway to the room, complete with what she presumably assumes passes for a concerned look on her face. If she’s that bloody concerned, Tonks thought, she wouldn’t be keeping her here. She’s always known her family aren’t to be trusted, aside from Mum and Dad and Sirius. Most of them are dead.

“For your future. You will not be here forever, after all.”

“I’d rather be here forever than out there with you, and her.” Tonks almost spits the last bit. She’d spit in dear Auntie Bella’s face if she could. “She’d rather kill me than let me out, anyway.”

“My sister will come around.” Narcissa Malfoy lowers the tray to the table with her wand. “Eat with me.” She’s dressed all prim and proper, burgundy robes with silver trim, and her hair plaited up in a complicated style away from her face. Tonks also wears expensive robes, although hers are navy blue with beading, and worn because the alternative is to be cold rather than because she likes the sodding things. Expensive robes are all they’ll provide her with, and, in retaliation, she hasn’t brushed her hair.

“No. Where’s Remus?”

Narcissa tuts as she settles herself into a chair and begins to pour tea. “I do wish you’d stop asking after that half-breed. You may be a half-blood, but we could certainly find you a better marriage than that.” She wrinkles her nose, and even in doing that she manages a level of refinement that Tonks never has. “It may have been acceptable as a fling, I suppose. It is not as if you got pregnant from it.”

“Rather die than marry whoever you think is suitable.” Tonks throws herself back onto the bed, half in a protest, half because, actually, she’s dizzy and looking at Narcissa eat makes her stomach hurt. Narcissa Malfoy is wrong about almost everything, but Tonks really does need to eat. She knows that, she’s not sodding stupid. She just doesn’t want to. “And fuck off.”

She’s learnt that screaming and shouting and threatening to curse people doesn’t work, as well.

“A wish that will be granted if you do not eat. Do I need to resort to the Imperius Curse?”

“Fuck off,” mutters Tonks. The phrase is overused. She doesn’t have an alternative, however.

“My dear,” says Narcissa, nibbling on a scone, “you’ve been here for six months, and in that time you have only eaten when I’ve been forced to use the Imperius. I don’t like doing that, but you’re painfully thin, and I don’t think you’ve had a cycle in that time, have you?”

“Bloody personal,” says Tonks, angrily. Not that Narcissa is wrong. “Fuck off,” she repeats, because her head is spinning and she can’t actually remember the last time she ate anything, and if Narcissa’s going to force her anyway, maybe she should just eat.

“Where’s Remus?” she asks. “What have you done with him?”

“I haven’t done anything,” Narcissa says, now arranging cucumber slices onto her plate. “And I do not appreciate the accusation.”

“You’re imprisoning me in a fucking dungeon and keeping me here against my fucking will! You’ve been using Unforgivable Curses on me! You’re sitting around nibbling fucking vegetables while your sister is allowed to kill anyone she takes a fucking fancies, probably including Remus!”

Tonks has more she could say, but she hasn’t got the energy.

“I don’t suppose your mother brought you up to use that sort of language,” is all Narcissa responds with. 

Tonks then realises she’s eating.

 

\-----

 

It has been sixteen days since he awoke, and Regulus feels as if he knows less of what is going on than he did then.

The flat is a hustle and bustle of activity, all of the day and most of the night. Andromeda comes and goes. She may not be acceptable in society, and is officially in hiding, but she is unlikely to be killed if she is discovered as herself. Privileged, Hermione calls it. The rest of them hide, for the most of it. Professor McGonagall takes the living room most mornings, and studies the occasional books, newspapers and scraps of parchment that Andromeda brings back, all of them with equal interest. The other two, Ron and Hermione, flit. They hide in the third bedroom, where they make their beds, they huddle together in the common rooms, they whisper together wherever it is that they are.

Regulus can make head nor tail of them, so he chooses to speak with Professor McGonagall.

“Minerva,” she corrects him, gently and firmly, like she would have in classes at Hogwarts. “I am no teacher now, certainly. Hogwarts is an entirely different place, and I have no interest in teaching the curriculum there.”

“My cousin’s curriculum.”

His former teacher purses her lips. “Indeed. Your cousin has been dangerous her life long, I expect. And now she has the means to be truly dangerous. Hogwarts is only the beginning of it.”

The situation as a whole is too daunting, so they discuss the changes at Hogwarts, for a while. If one was to skim over the details it would seem a conversation like many Regulus had heard and taken part in at his father’s dinners. Orion Black had sat on the Board of Governors of Hogwarts, and, therefore, education policy had been a topic they had been brought up well versed in. Regulus could talk about the various merits of Arithmancy as a compulsory subject or the qualities required for a Head of House position as if he had been a governor himself. It is not a skill that is currently useful.

“Do you miss it?” he asks.

“Of course. But I miss what it was, not what it is now. And my final memories of the place are less than positive.”

“The Battle?”

“Yes.”

“I know a little of that,” he says, for Andromeda has told him the basics of the situation. “But I do not know all of it.”

“No. Very few of us who were there want to relive it. We fought, and in some ways we won, but in many others, we lost.”

“He died, but she remains.” Regulus had been warned against saying either name, Bellatrix or Voldemort. Andromeda had explained the consequences well enough, and he has no desire to see if what she claims is true. He expects she is. Everything she’s so far said that he has been able to verify has been true, even if his ability for verification is limited. This he thinks it sensible to trust in, regardless. 

“Indeed.” Minerva puts down the book she has been holding in her lap. “His death only made her more keen for vengeance.”

Regulus thinks of the Bellatrix he had known as a child and a teenager. She did not lack for positive traits, he thinks, being beautiful and clever and charming when she wished to be. But she had always had a desire for power, and for influence, and he remembers the way she had talked of the Dark Lord. They had all spoken of him with reverence, but hers had been in some way different to the others.

“She continued the battle.”

“Yes. We fought bravely, after Harry Potter was killed and after he too was killed. But it was becoming fruitless, and more of our own were killed than of theirs. Others defected, or disappeared altogether. There came a point where we could no longer fight.”

Regulus does not say anything, does not interrupt. This is a story he wishes to hear from someone who was there.

“A sizeable group of us managed to escape Hogwarts that night,” Minerva continues, and Regulus thinks he sees her eyes watering. “Not enough of us, but some. That group included myself, Hermione and Ron, Andromeda’s daughter Nymphadora, and many friends of ours. But it included few that were at their full fighting strength, instead many who were injured, or young students who should not have remained at the castle. And so we were forced to hide, to begin with. We found a place that would fit us all in, and we waited until our wounded were strong enough, our younger ones were found safe places, and we had some information. We stayed for six months.”

“Why did you leave?”

“Because we could not allow your cousin to grow in power without at least some challenge. With her former Lord dead, and the figurehead of the resistance against him, your cousin wasted no time in taking control of the remainder of his followers and setting up her own proxy government of the wizarding world. Andromeda will have told you of her actions, I’m sure?”

“The Ministry is under her control, and the Minister is merely a puppet.”

“Not quite true. I knew Dolores Umbridge at school, and I worked with her at Hogwarts. The Minister knows exactly what she has joined and, at the very least, joined your cousin willingly and is in great sympathy with her aims. I’m sure she is rather happy to be serving such a regime.”

“That is worse, in many ways.”

Minerva grimaces. “You are quite correct about that, Regulus.” 

She stands, and pulls a small, leather bound book from the bag she always seems to keep at her feet. She flips through it to one of the first pages, and holds it out for him to inspect. There are three photographs on the page; a picture of Minerva and what is unmistakably an older Remus Lupin, his brother’s friend, one of a group of people who could not be long out of Hogwarts, which included Hermione and Ron, and a larger group photograph. This is the one Minerva points to, her finger shaking slightly as she does so.

“This is those of us who were left, once we had got everyone who could not fight to safety,” she says, and it’s with sadness. “I believe over half of us have since been killed. One or two have defected to our enemy. The rest of us are scattered. I expect you will ask me how that happened.”

“I recognise some of these faces,” he says, instead. “Remus Lupin, my brother’s friend. That is Kingsley Shacklebolt, who was in my year at Hogwarts, is it not? And that is Hagrid.” There were more he recognised as who they might have been, a cluster of redheads that must have been Weasleys, a blond with the look of a Macmillan, a tall boy with a rounded face who could only have been a Longbottom descendant. And more whose names he would not have been able to have even guessed at, but they all wore matching expressions of determination and weariness.

“Hagrid is dead,” says Minerva, shortly. “And Remus Lupin is missing. We know the whereabouts of Shacklebolt, at least.” Minerva glares at his face on the photograph. “I will not trouble you with everyone’s fate, but not enough of us remain.”

“What happened?” he asks, even though he thinks he knows the answer already.

“Your cousin seeks us out,” Minerva says, turning the page of the album to another photograph, a close up of who he knows to be Andromeda’s daughter. “She makes it her mission to find us all and to kill us. And each time she finds us, more of us die, and those that remain become ever more fractured. There are forty of us in that photograph I showed you. A few more joined, such as Andromeda. I’m certain of the continued existence of less than ten of us. Myself, Hermione and Ron, Andromeda, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Parvati Patil, Lee Jordan, Fleur Delacour, and Pomona Sprout. There are more that may be alive, including Nymphadora and Remus, but we do not know their fates.”

“Andromeda mentioned that.” Regulus has never met his cousin - either of them, Draco Malfoy having been born after his disappearance - but he feels something that might be sadness about her disappearance anyway.

“Unfortunately, there is more. The Ministry has legalised the application of the Trace onto any witch or wizard deemed to be against the government, and so we can be tracked each time we cast a spell. And they arrive, and they try to kill us. They place enchantments on any place owned by any of us, or of significance to us, so it becomes difficult to meet. They use people we are close to lever influence over us. Every time we lose someone, we struggle to find each other, and we have retreated to the Muggle world, as we are reported as dangerous criminals each time we venture into a wizarding area. We still do what we can.”

Regulus does not know what to say. The world was dark when he was last alive, certainly, but it was not like this.

“They want to kill us,” Minerva finishes, “and eradicate opposition. They wish to make everyone else in the wizarding world afraid to put a foot out of line. But we will not let them without much more of a fight.”

“I will help you,” Regulus says, more determined than perhaps he feels. “However I can.” He has already promised this to Andromeda, of course, and, in some ways, pledged his life to the destruction of Dark Lords when he decided to do what he had done in 1979, as long ago as that was for the rest of these he now fights with. But he feels as though it needs to be said again.

“Thank you,” Minerva says. “It is appreciated. It is not an easy or glamorous thing, to join a resistance. But it must be done.”

“Why did you?” Regulus asks. He has explained his own story over and over, and he knows Andromeda’s - a tale of the loss of her husband and worry for her daughter, and he understands enough of Hermione and Ron’s. But he does not know hers.

“Many years ago,” she says, “I knew a boy called Tom. And for many years I did not wish to fight him in the open. Loyalty, I think, to the boy I had known, and fear of the man he had become. And Hogwarts needed me. The students in my care needed me in the school, to keep them safe, not to be out and fighting in a war. But he was too dangerous, and too little of the boy I had known remained, and I found I could no longer justify not joining what was then the Order of the Phoenix. I fought, and continued to do so when the foe changed. I don’t regret it.”

“You killed him, Andromeda told me.”

“Yes. He killed Harry Potter. It was the least I could do.”

“It was very brave.” 

“It was very necessary. It isn’t about bravery, Regulus, and you should know that more than anyone.”

The door to the flat clicked open, and, with it, a clatter of boots on floorboards came from the third bedroom. Ron and Hermione, wands drawn and faces set, dart past the door to the living room. Regulus hears Andromeda prove her identity to them, and reassure them, before he turns his attention back to Minerva. He assumes Ron and Hermione’s reaction is paranoia, but then he sees that Minerva is also on her feet, settling her wand back into her pocket as if she, too, drew it at the sound of the door.

“I won’t deny that all of us have some issues from all of this,” she says, as if that explains it all. Regulus thinks perhaps it does.

Andromeda has little to say of her trip to the outside world. She has listened in a cafe for a while, in the wizarding town of Tinworth, hearing nothing of value to them. The wizarding world remains quiet, the main gossip being of a baby to be born to the Malfoy family. She has collected ingredients for a further batch of Polyjuice, and several helpful herbs for healing, but she has little else.

“I’ll start on the Polyjuice,” Hermione volunteers. “I’ve brewed it before.”

“I heard about that,” says Minerva. There must be a story to this, Regulus thinks, and there’s a part of him that wants to know exactly what it is. Ron is looking as if he might laugh. Hermione looks affronted.

“I would like to assist,” Regulus says, entirely unsure of why it is he volunteers for this. It is not just for the story. “I have always enjoyed the study of potions, and I have an Outstanding NEWT in the subject.” He does not think it is entirely that. She does not look particularly impressed, either, but merely nods.

“Okay.”

They start two days later, after Andromeda has collected the lacewing flies from a source in a shady part of Edinburgh. Hermione sets up the cauldron in the kitchen, and then pulls a chair into the centre of the room and begins to fiddle with a white box on the ceiling. She removes several black cylinders from it, and puts them on the kitchen sideboard before dragging the chair back to its place.

“I’ll get Andromeda to take them to the battery recycling,” she says. 

“What are they?”

“Batteries. They power the smoke detector. And as we’re going to be using fire in here, I’d rather it didn’t go off every time we tried to heat the potion.”

“And what is a smoke detector?”

“Stops us burning in our beds. By Muggle fire, it’s bollocks against wizarding fire. As Ron would say.”

She sits herself on the floor next to the cauldron, arms and legs crossed. She looks unapproachable, although whether by accident or intention Regulus does not know. Her hair is pulled back into a plait down her back, and she wears a jumper the twin of Ron’s ‘F’ jumper, this one with a ‘G’ knitted into the front. Regulus considers asking her of the importance of these jumpers, but he does not think she would give him an answer. He does not wish to upset her. There is likely some significance to them that he does not know.

He does not ask any further questions about smoke detectors or batteries, either. He wonders if he could ask Andromeda later. Something makes him not wish to look an idiot in front of Hermione.

“Where is it that we start?” he asks, instead, sitting himself on the floor opposite her. It is cold; he is not accustomed to sitting on the floor, so perhaps it is supposed to be.

“Got to stew the lacewing flies,” she says. “Maybe prep some of the other bits. There isn’t much to do today. I can do it by myself, if you want.”

“No,” he says, “I wish to learn.” He wishes to be here.

“Okay.”

They talk little as she directs him what to do, and he does his best to follow the instructions. 

“No,” she says. “Can you cut them smaller?”

“Sorry,” he replies, putting down the knife, feeling rather like he has failed. “I cannot. My hands do not work so well as they did before.”

She looks up from her work, and, for the first time, looks at him properly. They make eye contact for a matter of seconds, and Regulus feels as if it could have gone on forever. He thinks of several things he could say, and she, perhaps, is thinking too, because neither of them say anything.

“It must be difficult,” she says, in the end. “You died as far as you were concerned. And now you’re here, and life is just as shit, it’s just a different war.”

“It is not what I had supposed would happen.”

“How do you feel about it?” she asks.

Regulus considers that. It is not a question he has been asked. Andromeda is very concerned for his physical health, ensuring that there are no negative consequences of his enforced sleep.

“I suppose I am grateful,” he said. “I did not want to die in that cave, and I did not.”

“You’re allowed to feel other things, too,” she says. “I’m grateful I’m not dead, I suppose, but that doesn’t mean I’m not sad and angry and, well, all sorts of things, about what’s happening and about my friends. You might be fine about it, I don’t know, but I don’t think you entirely are.”

“I did not want to be dead,” he settles on saying, rather than the question he truly wants to ask, which is how she knows that. “And I am not. I do not like the world I have returned to, but I will change that if I can.”

“I think I can understand that,” she says, and looks as if there are other things she wants to say, but the cauldron begins to bubble, and her attention switches back to that. They go back to business after that, and she cuts his roots up into smaller pieces while he stirs and weighs. It is companionable, but Regulus finds that he misses the brief moment where this seemed to be more than potion making. He shakes his head slightly. This is not about anything other than the potion, he reminds himself.

“Alright, Hermione?” Ron’s head appears around the door of the kitchen. “Everything okay?”

She’s concentrating, so it’s a couple of seconds before she replies, and in that time Ron has pushed himself all of the way into the room. As if he thinks there’s danger. There is only her and Regulus and a cauldron, and if any of those is dangerous, it would be Regulus himself.

“Yes,” she says, and Ron’s face has a look of relief on it. “We’re safe at the moment, Ron.”

“For the moment,” he says, sitting himself down with the two of them, and Regulus suddenly feels less inclined to speak. He chops ingredients in silence, and listens to their chatter. He wonders why he feels so alone.


	4. Ottery St Catchpole

Ron’s always been one of seven, as long as he can remember. He supposes he was one of six at one point, but that was for less than eighteen months, and he doesn’t remember even a single month of it. So he’s always been Ron Weasley, the sixth of seven, and someone had always done everything of importance before he even got there to try it.

Funny how that doesn’t matter any more.

“Someone should come with you,” he says, when Andromeda announces that she’s going out for supplies and gossip. “It isn’t safe for you to go alone.”

Of course, the Ministry pamphlets talk about how this is the safest time for witches and wizards in a decade. Almost all types of crime are down, and there’s nothing to be afraid of.

“Nothing to be afraid if you toe the line,” says Hermione. Which they aren’t. They’re a motley collection of fugitives and rebels, and they’re so far past the line it wouldn’t even be visible with a telescope.

“Which I will be,” Andromeda says. “I hate to remind you all of this, but I’m the only one here who isn’t either legally dead or an enemy of my sisters regime.”

“And if she finds out what you’re planning, you’ll be one of those things,” Ron says. “Except possibly physically dead as well as legally. If you’re captured, she could find out about us.”

“I doubt that,” says Andromeda.

“Just take someone with you,” says Minerva, shutting the newspaper she’s been reading. “Haven’t you seen the new law?”

“I hardly think it can get any worse,” Andromeda sniffs, but they read the paper, and, of course, it can.

“They were always going to come for us, after they had dealt with the Muggleborns,” Minerva says. “It was only really a matter of time.” She’s taking this well, aside from the slight shake of her wand arm as she incinerates the newspaper on the table. It leaves a small, charred mark behind. 

“Fuck,” says Ron. 

“The Half-Blood Registration Act,” says Regulus, slowly. “What is it that happened before?”

“They rounded us up like fucking cattle,” says Hermione. She’s retreated from the table, standing with her back to the fridge, shaking with rage. Or Ron thinks it’s rage. She’s the only Muggleborn they know of that escaped the registrations.

“They required all Muggleborns to register themselves with the Ministry,” Andromeda says, and Ron, rather belatedly, remembers that she has a personal stake in this, too. “My husband went on the run rather than submit himself for registration, and he was killed for it. Others registered. Most went to Azkaban.”

“I see.” Regulus says nothing else.

“I’m coming with you,” says Ron. “I’m the least at risk, and, therefore, I’m the one that should come.”

“I am older than you,” Minerva begins.

“And a half-blood. You’re more in danger than I am. Worst that’ll happen if I’m caught is I’ll be made an example of. Pureblood privilege,” he says. “Andromeda and I are least at risk.”

Nobody likes this statement. But they all agree.

“You know what you risk if they catch you,” Andromeda says, as they take the Polyjuice Potion before they leave. 

“Yes.”

“They’ll use Occulmency against you until you break. They’ll take every piece of information you possess, everything you love and hold dear, and they’ll use it against you. They’ll use the Cruciatus Curse, certainly, and worse, but the physical pain is not what they want to see. They will want to see your mind broken.”

“I know,” says Ron, because he’s seen it happen. He doesn’t let himself shiver or shake or do anything aside from make eye contact with Andromeda. “I know, and I’m still coming.”

“Good.” She softens, just slightly. “I don’t want to scare you,” she adds. “But it’s important that you know.”

“I had six siblings,” he says. He doesn’t need to say the rest. He had six siblings, and she had a Muggleborn husband, a half-blood daughter. Hermione’s the face of the rebels, before you even count her birth, and Regulus is legally dead, and Minerva’s on the run from the law. It’s what it is.

“For what it’s worth, I’m grateful that you’re coming.”

Andromeda swings herself onto the broomstick, and Ron climbs on behind, throws the Cloak over themselves, and they’re off. 

 

—

 

Regulus is sitting on the balcony when Hermione wants to go and sit out there. For a moment she almost goes in, back to her bedroom and safety, but it isn’t his fault she feels awkward around him. So she goes straight out there, anyway. If she doesn’t face even the smallest of her fears, perhaps she’ll eventually face none of them, and that’d lead her to certain doom. Maybe that’s a stupid way to think about it. Maybe if she hides in her room once, she won’t hide in there forever.

“How’re you?” she asks, politely, and startles him. “Sorry,” she says, something that she seems to be saying a lot, lately. “Just felt rude not to say something. You know. Announce my presence, at least. I can go in if you’d prefer.”

“I am fine,” he answers. “I do not know if we comprehend the enormity of what we attempt.”

“Of course we don’t. If we did, we wouldn’t do it.”

“And you?”

Hermione wonders how truthful to be. “Terrified,” she says, in the end. “Worried Ron will do something stupid. Worried that we’ve calculated it wrong and that the moment somebody uses magic around him, they’ll pick that up on the Trace. We know it’s a modified version of what they put in children, not the same one, but we just don’t know how modified. So we could have sent them to walk to their deaths, fly, really, they took brooms, but Andromeda’s always come back alive, so maybe they’ll be fine.”

“I am certain he’ll be fine.”

“Don’t be, please.” Hermione has never been superstitious, not in her first twenty years of life, but now it’s starting to creep in. “Feels like jinxing it.”

“Sorry.”

“It probably isn’t healthy to apologise this much.” 

Regulus ignores that, and perhaps wisely. Hermione doesn’t feel like she makes much sense a lot of the time any more. Ron reckons it’s a consequence of their surroundings, which isn’t the correct phrase, but she’s run out of effort to correct his idioms. 

“How do you know how the Trace may work?” Regulus asks, instead, and Hermione feels relieved that they’ve returned to facts. Facts about their situation. What they don’t know is still more than what they do know, but it’s better to dwell on the latter.

“We had a mole in the Ministry,” she explains. “He was collecting us information about how things were working, and passing it back to us if there was something that could help us. He saved our lives countless times, we kept getting caught out by new policies.”

“You say ‘had’. What happened to him?”

“They found out.”

Hermione thinks that’s all she needs to say, and by the way that Regulus nods and then looks at the floor, she thinks she’s right. “He was one of Ron’s brothers,” she adds. “Percy. He fooled them for ages. We have to remember these people. We have to say their names.”

“Else their sacrifices are in vain.”

“Yes. We remembered you, too, you know. It wasn’t as if anyone knew what you’d done for ages, so they didn’t then, but afterwards, we did. Because everyone deserves remembering, everyone who did anything worthwhile.”

“Even if they spent longer fighting for the other side than they did for our own.”

“Everyone has a right to redemption. Percy was practically on their side before he became our mole. He, well, he didn’t really understand what was going on, at first. Most of the wizarding world didn’t, I don’t think they wanted to. On one had you had Dumbledore and Harry, telling everyone that the person they’d most feared, or if they weren’t old enough to remember it, the person they’d been taught to fear above all else, was back, alive, strong, murdering again. And on the other you had Fudge, he was the Minister for Magic at the time, telling everyone that it was all okay. I know which one I’d have preferred to be true.”

“But you always believed Harry.”

“Yes. I saw what he looked like when he said it. He was my best friend.” It still hurts to talk about him, so Hermione bites her lip and blinks frantically. She pretends the rather wilted looking pot-plant next to her is fantastically interesting. It sort of is, a magical plant in an otherwise Muggle-furnished flat, the pot clearly magically made too. The effect clashes with the stark black-painted iron railings and the standard council-block brick wall next to them, but Hermione’s always quite liked odd decor clashes. 

“As is Ron.”

“Yes.”

Regulus turns away from her and looks out at the world beneath them. “I’ve lived in London all my life,” he says. “And I’ve never seen it like this.”

“I was brought up in a nice, middle-class town with nice, middle-class aspirations,” Hermione says. “My parents were dentists. I planned to be a doctor, or a teacher, or perhaps a vet. Not this.”

“I planned to play Quidditch for England. I am afraid that I do not know what a vet is. Or a doctor.”

“Muggle Healer,” Hermione explains. “And a vet is a Healer for animals.”

“I see. I suppose just as I do not know those words, a child does not know of rebels or insurgents or treasonous resistances.”

“No. I wouldn’t say most of them do.”

They sit for a while, and neither of them say anything. Hermione very much wants to put her hand on his arm, or hug him, or tell him that its all going to be okay. 

“Why?” she asks. “Why did you leave your Dark Lord?”

He gets up and leans over the balcony. “I do not entirely know. By that, I mean that I do not know which was the final straw, as it were, which was the final thing that made me say that this was enough. It could have been any of it. But, one day, I could not countenance it any longer.” He pauses. “But you knew before I did. You were, after all, the one that came back for me. To give me the things I would need to survive. For that, I remain eternally grateful.”

“I didn’t.”

“I remember it. As much, if not more, as I remember anything from that time. You found me in the street, and you handed me a golden chain, a vial of potion, and a origami shape, a phoenix. I remember it as well as I remember anything.”

“It wasn’t me.” Hermione hadn’t - why would she? It wasn’t possible to go that far back in time, and origami, she couldn’t fold origami, and what kind of potion you’d need to keep a man in an enchanted sleep for that many years she didn’t know. It couldn’t have been her. “You must misremember.”

“I remember it,” he says. “It was your face.”

“Andromeda never mentioned anything like that.”

“I did not tell Andromeda. By the time that I reached her, I was in no state to explain the final few months of my life, and, besides, you sent her a note, too. That was how she knew what to do.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Hermione repeated. “It couldn’t have been me. I wouldn’t know how.” Regulus isn’t looking at her, she doesn’t begin to know how to tell what he’s thinking. “It isn’t that I wouldn’t want to have saved you,” she continued, “but I didn’t.”

“I see.” He leaves the balcony.

 

—-

 

They land in a paddock behind the village of Ottery St Catchpole, not far from the torched remains of The Burrow. Andromeda notices Ron’s grimace when the cloak is removed, and the set of his shoulders, but he doesn’t say anything or ask to turn back. Andromeda is proud of him for that. She’s old enough that a bit of shit in her life is to be accepted; he’s too young for all of this.

They walk down to the village proper, careful not to draw any attention to themselves. Ron walks half a foot ahead of her, and his hand is in his pocket all nonchalant, but Andromeda knows his hand is on his wand. As is hers, under her cloak, which is drawn around her as if to protect from the cold. Otherwise they appear entirely normal.

“I think the weather is getting warmer,” Ron says. “Spring will be here soon enough.”

“My bulbs will be dying if it doesn’t appear soon,” says Andromeda, in response, but she was never a Herbologist and the phrase sounds strange to her ear. Ron replies, and they make strange small talk down to the village proper.

They break character only once, when their feet first touch the High Street.

“This isn’t the right village,” Ron says. “It is, but it isn’t.”

Andromeda knows exactly what he means. The flat at Kibbern Place looks exactly as one would expect it to look - a slightly grimy flat in a run-down area of outer London, surrounded by similar flats and the odd well-kept one. If one has visited Ottery St Catchpole before, and she has, and Ron has lived here, it looks nothing like one would expect. Gone is any reference to the Muggles that lived here before, save a tall, grey marble obelisk that Andromeda has no desire to read. It is a monument to those who cleared the village. That is all she needs to know of that. 

The businesses left are wizarding, the houses, wizarding. The inhabitants are all pure or half-bloods, and the vast majority walk around apparently without a care in the world. It is neat, clean, tidy, and very much entirely magical.

They buy what they need from a shop, carefully counting out what they need. They can’t get everything, and Andromeda’s sources had suggested that this was one of the better supplied potions shops. It’s not a war, no, but there’s symptoms of it all the same. Shortages are rife, they hear. But the Ministry is stable, the country is prosperous, everything is fine say the pamphlets from the Ministry. 

Ron picks one up from the counter and reads it while Andromeda pays for the goods. He slips it into his pocket as they turn to go. That’s good. He’s not burnt it; he’s playing his part well.

“I hate her,” says Ron, outside, out of earshot. “Sorry, no offence, I know she’s your sister.”

“None taken.”

Because Andromeda didn’t like this either. She might not have interacted much with the Muggle world, even after her estrangement from her family, save for her husband’s relatives, but she that didn’t mean she thought it should disappear. That was her family’s view. That was her sister’s. 

“She made it this way, after all,” Andromeda says, as they pick their way over the cobbles to the village pub. “It was her that decided it had to be changed.” She is cautious of what she says. They must not draw attention to themselves, after all.

“I don’t think the revisions make the book make any more sense,” says Ron, as they pass a family out shopping. A witch, a wizard, and three non-Hogwarts age children, a perfect little family for Bellatrix Black’s new world. “She’s decided to change it, but she’s wrong.”

Andromeda stops just outside the pub. “We have to be careful,” she says. It’s all any of them ever say, as if the realities of their current situation haven’t sunk in yet, and of course they have. “Just information. Listen for anything about Cissa. We need her.”

Ron mutters something incomprehensible, and Andromeda decides she’d rather not know. He’s barely twenty, but he’s done much more difficult things like this, and so she trusts him not to break his character when it matters. He’s survived this long. Whether he should have had to is an entirely moot point, after all.

They wander in, and Andromeda settles them into a seat in the centre of the room while Ron buys them each a drink from the bar. The pub is all dark wood and elegant furniture, and, of course, everyone in it is well-dressed in robes and hats and cloaks. No Muggle dress is permitted in Bellatrix Black’s new world. No care for the people who cannot afford such an establishment. 

Half of the people look entirely at ease here, sitting in clusters around their tables, glasses of mead and wine and Gillywater surrounding the floral arrangements. They talk in low voices, in the main, but of economics and advances in potions making and what is to be performed next at the Draco Malfoy Memorial Opera House. They aren’t of any use to Andromeda, unless they talk about Cissa.

The others are the ones she’s interested in. The remaining patrons of the pub clump together in closer groups than the ones who feel entitled to be here. Their clothes are less well-put together, and they don’t have the easy loop of an arm over the back of a chair, the confident way in which they lean over the bar to point at the mead they’ve chosen. They keep their heads down, on their drinks, once they’ve made sure they’re seen. Andromeda recognises faces, can put a name to half of them. She’s glad they’re alive. 

Ron returns, placing two glasses of mead on the table.

“It’s an inoffensive choice,” he says, to which Andromeda agrees. Under the table, he hands her a handful of small, grey stones. “My brother’s inventions,” he says. “Release a few. Pocket the rest, I would.”

Andromeda does. They scuttle off across the floor, blending in with the rich patterns on the carpet, and almost immediately she begins to hear conversations across the room.

“Clever,” she says. “Invisibility charms?”

“Camouflage.” He sips his drink as if this is all entirely above board. “They need skin contact to activate. We used to have ear-pieces, the early versions had strings, but these are much more subtle.”

They drink and listen in, swapping conversation on, of all things, Quidditch so that they don’t stick out as much as they would without talking. Thankfully, it’s a conversation Ron can carry with little input from her. To all intents and purposes, with the Polyjuice, they look like a woman being entirely bored by her son’s insistence on talking sports

Ron’s halfway through a rant about the Ballycastle Bats and their latest scandal when Andromeda hears something of use. A pair of people, a witch and a wizard, sit by the window, her with a wine, he with a mead. He reads a paper, but he turns the page too often. She glances around as if Bellatrix Black might leap out at any moment. There’s something off about them, but, then, they may just be plants to lure someone into a false sense of security.

“Half-blood registry,” says the wizard, dressed in a smart tweed cloak and a matching hat. Too Muggle, the patterns. “Buried on page seventeen, as if we won’t notice it that way.”

“It isn’t safe to talk about that sort of thing here,” says the woman. “We can’t.” She looks over her shoulder quickly, a universal sign of being uncomfortable with what she’s doing. 

“Can’t talk about it anywhere,” grumbles her companion. “Doesn’t mean it’s right, what’s happening.”

“It isn’t safe,” the woman repeats. 

“Everyone’s talking about it,” tweedy says. “And they’ve never been caught. Everyone knows she’s too busy fighting real rebels to worry about anyone talking in pubs in the middle of the day. As long as you don’t use the banned words, you’re fine.”

The woman doesn’t look convinced, but she leans in towards him anyway. 

“I’ve heard there’s more than that planned.” She talks at speed, as if she won’t say it at all if she doesn’t get it out this second. “There’s going to be a protest. Six weeks from now, they say.”

“Rumours,” said the man. “Nobody would dare.”

“Rumours I’ve heard more than once,” says the woman, sitting back into her chair. “But I’m not going to say any more. You don’t know who’s listening.”

Andromeda’s heart hammers in her chest. Ron looks grim. She downs the remains of her mead and gets up, trying for the decorum her mother would have wanted her to have but almost knocking down the table as she moved. 

“They can’t,” said Ron, outside, a safe distance from the pub. “A protest would be…” he tails off, looking like Andromeda feels.

“Deadly,” she finishes.


	5. Of Friendship

Narcissa Black kneels on the floor in front of her sister. Around her, the room is quiet. You do not talk when Bellatrix is thinking.

It gives Narcissa time to think herself, at least. She guards her thoughts like she was taught by Auntie Walburga, the way that Bellatrix was taught, and, besides, they are of little consequence. Narcissa is a traditional witch, in many ways. She is more concerned with family and fashions than she is with the governance of Bellatrix’s world.

“My dear sister,” she says. “I am at your service.”

She has, after all, returned to the Black name. Bellatrix is her family, so it had been prudent, and, besides, the Malfoy name is in tatters. This had seemed like a wise choice at the time that she had made it.

“Has the girl talked?”

“No.” For all Narcissa’s hiding of her thoughts, Bellatrix had learnt at the Dark Lord’s knee, too. And she would know an outright lie when she heard it. “I remain confident I can gain her trust.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, my dear sister.”

Narcissa has never heard a room so quiet as when Bellatrix is thinking. Around Narcissa, as she kneels with her head bowed, she sees nothing except the parquet floor, a dark wood with a light grain, and Bellatrix’s shoes. She knows, however, that the room is full of Bella’s followers, a mixture of those she inherited from the Dark Lord and the new. They range from zealous and keen to rather more reserved, variations on cruel, clever and ambitions. Some of them lack morals of any kind, others are capable of entirely justifying that they are in the right. In all respects, they are as the Dark Lord’s followers were.

“Let me have a crack at the girl,” says Nott the elder. “I could make her talk.”

“And what would be left were you to do so, I wonder?” Narcissa asks. Bellatrix will understand that. After all, Tom Riddle always did.

More silence. This time, no follower interrupts. Narcissa begins to wonder if she would be permitted a cushioning charm the next time she is asked to kneel. 

“It is my sister’s task,” says Bellatrix, finally. “I expect progress soon, dear sister.”

“I endeavour to help,” says Narcissa, as she rises. She is not as young as she once was, and her knees feel as if they may crumble for a short second as she raises herself. She melds herself back into the ranks of Bella’s followers without a further word, and Bellatrix turns her attention to other people. 

Narcissa never took the Dark Mark. Three times the Dark Lord had asked her, and pregnancy had saved her the first two. The third time, Draco had taken it in her stead. Did she regret allowing him to do so? No. Because he would have asked for Draco anyway, soon enough. It was Lucius that had stood between Draco and the Dark Lord, never her. The Dark Lord had no use or time for a witch whose primary concerns were family and fashions.

No, that was not entirely correct. The Dark Lord would have had a use for her, except that she did not allow him to know that she had such uses.

And, perhaps, if she allowed herself to think this way, she could have stood between Draco and Tom Riddle. But, much like the way she stayed here, she had not. 

As Narcissa ponders this, one of Bellatrix’s followers hits the floor, dead.

“You will end the protest before it begins, Nott,” she says, “else you will meet the same fate.”

Bellatrix stalks from the room. The room waits, silent, until the doors bang closed behind the hem of her cloak, and then it erupts into noise. Two wizards remove the body. Nott looks quiet and stern, then begins muttering to those around him. A plan, a plot, no doubt. Bellatrix does not micromanage. If one is entrusted with a task, one gets it done, and Bella does not concern herself with how. The boy Nott, the one that Narcissa ignores, stands at his father’s side, but he does not join the muttering.

Narcissa does not have the time to concern herself with him. She sweeps away herself. It is time, she supposes, that she goes to see her niece again.

 

—-

 

As the days go by, Regulus feels no less the odd one out, as it were. There is Ron and Hermione and there is Minerva and Andromeda, and there is Regulus. He thought that perhaps this would change, over time. It does not.

What changes is that they all leave the house more often, in these pairs and others, and they gather information and they come back and they all sit around the kitchen table as equals and they discuss what to do next. Regulus is allowed as much of a voice as the rest of them. Except that he has little to say. He’s not seen any of what they have, and, although they do not say it, he does not think they take his views so seriously.

And then there is the way they greet one another. If one of them has been out, Ron and Hermione clutch at each other on the safe return. If they are not more than friends, they wish to be. And Minerva and Andromeda are less demonstrative, certainly, there is less running into one another and less bone-crushing hugs, but there is still the relief, the touch that serves to prove the other one is, indeed, alive. 

And there is Regulus. 

He is not entirely sure what he can do to remedy this. In his life, Regulus has always been able to make friends. Sirius had always accused him of trading on his name, and, now, Regulus supposes that Sirius may have had somewhat of a point. A Black commands respect. That was what Mother had always said. A name matters. 

Regulus was not sure what he was, if not his name.

It reaches the point where he decides to dress differently. He owns two pairs of trousers, both purchased by Andromeda, neatly tailored, one in grey, and one in black. He would have preferred robes. She had originally bought him jeans, which now seem to belong to Ron, and t-shirts. Regulus chooses to wear the trousers with white shirts. He owns no shoes. Why does he need them, if he is not to be allowed outside?

Perhaps he merely needs to look more like them, to be accepted. Sirius dressed like a Muggle with no money, as did his friends.

He sneaks into Ron and Hermione’s room. Ron is much the same size as him, an inch taller, perhaps, and so Regulus hopes he will find something that fits. He digs up jeans, if not the pair that Andromeda had bought for him, a similar one, a t-shirt with a picture of a hippogriff on, which is absurd, and a woollen jumper. He puts them on. It feels all wrong.

The wrong feeling is not helped by Ron’s snigger of laughter.

“I’m sorry,” says Ron, as Regulus tears the jumper off over his head and throws it at the wall, “I shouldn’t be laughing, you can hit me if you like, but that one was Mum’s. Here,” he says, crossing the room and delving in the chest of drawers. “This one. This one was Percy’s.”

He holds it out to Regulus, a peace offering which Regulus does not accept.

“I really am sorry,” he said. “It’s just, I don’t know, there are two options when you see your very posh friend wearing your dead mum’s stuff, and one of them’s laughter, isn’t it?”

“I suppose.” He had used the word friend. Regulus decides not to read too much into it.

“Look.” says Ron, throwing the jumper onto the bed. “It’s there if you want it.” He sits next to the jumper, easing his trainers off his feet. “Fucking hell,” he adds. “It’s impossible out there. Nightmare. Feel like I’m going to snap and do something stupid and get killed any minute, or, worse, someone else will.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Trust me, you don’t want to, mate.”

Regulus wishes to hex something, It is as if they don’t understand.

“What’s up?” Ron asks, turning his attention from his feet to Regulus. Regulus thinks he may leave the room. “There’s something.”

“You do not need to know. It is nothing.”

“Well, come on, that isn’t true, is it? And you don’t have to tell me, but tell someone, yeah? I’m not exactly renowned for my emotional intelligence - emotional range of a teaspoon, my arse - but I’ll give it a go.”

“You do not understand. You do not know what it is like to be left behind.”

“Nah,” said Ron. “You’re right. I don’t know how it feels to be left behind.” He pats the bed beside him, indicating that Regulus should sit. “Tell me.”

“Pardon?”

“Tell me how it feels. Rant. Rave. Get it out of your system. I mean, depends if you’re just looking for a whinge, as my mum would’ve said, or whether you want constructive suggestions, in which case someone else might be your man. Or girl, given the set up round here. But anyway, off you go. Talk.”

Regulus felt a vague sense of unease about this. It was clear that the other boy did not feel the same. He kicks off the other trainer, pulls his legs up onto the bed and sits with them crossed underneath him on the floral duvet cover. He wears socks that do not match, one of which is inside out, and a jumper that appeared to be several sizes too big, with the letter F knitted into the front of it. He was a blood traitor, because he was a Weasley, and now he was an ally, too.

“It is merely that I do not like the feeling of being left behind. I want to do something.”

“Yeah,” said Ron, as if encouraging Regulus to continue.

“I may not have been,” Regulus searched for the correct word, “available for the past twenty or so years, but I did enough before that to prove that I can manage myself in a fight. I am not injured or ill. I wish to help. I must be of some use.”

“Catch,” says Ron, and in one swift movement picks up an apple from the bedside table and throws it at Regulus. He does catch it, but barely, the tips of his fingers closing around the fruit. “Not bad. The reflexes are there. You were a Seeker, though, so they should be at least a bit natural. And again.” Regulus missed the orange, and it rolls away across the carpeted floor. “Maybe could do with a little work.” Ron seems to eye Regulus closely, as he picks up a second orange and throws it up and down. “We might not be able to do much magic practice, but we can work on other things. Reflexes. Refresh your memory of spells, offensive and defensive. Practice creeping and hiding and stalking, Muggle-style disguising, that sort of thing. It’s all useful.”

“I see.” He did not think he did see. “And so you propose to throw fruit at me?”

“If it gets them to believe you’re good enough to get out of here, is there any harm in it?”

Regulus supposed not.

And this is how they ended up in the second bedroom, Regulus’ room, as it were, with Regulus holding a wooden spoon and Ron a bowl of scrunched up paper.

“You’ve got to hit them,” he says. “Like a Beater would a Bludger.” He throws the first one, and Regulus misses it. He considers putting the spoon down and giving up. “First one was a practice,” says Ron, and throws a second. It lands at Regulus’ feet once more as the spoon wildly swings, but another one comes so fast that this time he does not have the time to think of giving up. Perhaps that is Ron’s plan. He hits it, and Ron cheers.

With half an hour, Regulus is standing surrounded by scrunched up paper, but there is also plenty on the floor by Ron’s feet, and by the door, on the bed, underneath the windowsill.

“Be much easier if I could just Accio them all back,” Ron says. “It’s the little bits of magic you miss, isn’t it? I don’t miss cursing my enemies, particularly, but I resent having to find my own shoes. Is that twatty? I think that’s twatty, isn’t it?”

Regulus laughs.

It is only when Ron seems startled that Regulus realises this is the first time he has laughed at least since he returned to the land of the living, if not for some months before that. He has never been good at these witty conversations, and so he says nothing in return, but he’s laughing nonetheless.

He thinks he likes Ron. He considers asking Ron if he is interested in Hermione. The cues the pair of them give off, well, Regulus is not sure. But he doesn’t ask.

“Thank you,” he says, instead.

And the next time they want to send a reconnaissance mission, Regulus insists on going.

“You don’t have a wand,” says Minerva. She looks unimpressed, Regulus thinks.

“No, but you have the Trace,” Regulus replies. He tries to make his language sound more like the others. “Nobody’s going to be using magic, are they?”

“But in an emergency, we might have to,” Andromeda says. She is, to Regulus’ eye, less worried about him coming. 

Hermione says nothing. She only makes eye contact with him and smiles. He feels something in his chest that he decides to pretend does not exist.

“Let him,” says Ron. “Would you want to be left behind?” Regulus smiles. He would tell Ron how grateful he is if he could, but he thinks the other boy already knows.

 

—-

 

His third trip out of the flat, they all go. They take a Muggle train to their destination, something Regulus has never before done. He has paid little attention to where it is they are going, and, now, it seems too late to ask. Someone - Ron, he thinks - heard a rumour that there are wizards congregating in an area of north London, and it stood up to the most basic of fact checking, so off it is that they go.

The train is dirty, from the floors to the walls to the chairs, and Regulus chooses to stand rather than to sit on one of them. Minerva and Andromeda, dressed in neat Muggle clothing, whisper together, sitting on adjacent seats. Ron sits opposite, reading a newspaper called the Daily Mirror, and mutters under his breath about somebody whose name is Tony Blair. Regulus considers asking who that is, but Ron’s soon engaged in debate with Hermione, and so Regulus looks out of the window again. It’s Minerva and Andromeda, Ron and Hermione, and then Regulus, but the view outside of the window is interesting and he almost forgets that he is on the outside, just for a moment.

“What do you think, Regulus?” Ron asks. 

“Er,” says Regulus.

“Don’t put him on the spot, Ron,” says Hermione, elbowing Ron. “It isn’t fair.”

“I was asking his opinion, thank you very much,” says Ron, and they disappear back into their conversation.

If the train was interesting to Regulus, the station is more so. Hermione says it is quite quiet, which Regulus supposes the perhaps it is in the context of the other times she has been here, but to him, it feels busy and noisy and full. He tugs at his jumper. His shoes do not fit, not properly, and he does not like the way the noise bounces off the tiles in the station. Why so many tiles?

“Easy to clean, I suppose,” says Ron, when Regulus asks him this question. “Doubt anyone’d want to clean a place like this without magic.”

“No.” 

“Do you know which exit?” Hermione asks, bustling up to them with a clutch of maps. “Here, Regulus,” she continues, not waiting for an answer, shoving a map into his hands, “we’re at Old Street. If you get lost, we’re meeting back at Piccadilly Circus, over here, and there’s several routes you can take, depending on if you’re being followed or on if you end up closer to Moorgate, here,” she points at the map as she talks, her fingers tracing lines that are black and blue and red and three colours all at once, “whichever way you go, you’ll be fine.”

Regulus is not so sure.

“You will be,” she says, with a dazzling smile. “Nobody’s going to die today.”

To bring it up seems unnecessary, Regulus thinks. Why introduce the concept of death into a day that it does not have to be in.

“Okay,” he says. “Piccadilly Circus.”

“It’s a ridiculous name, so it’s easy to remember,” Hermione continues, while Ron raises an eyebrow. “The name comes from a piccadil collar, of all things, the area was famous for a particular tailor in the 18th, I think, century who made them, and there isn’t a circus, if you were wondering, the circus part of the name refers to the roundabout, which I’m not sure is even there any more, and…”

“Hermione,” says Ron. “You’re wittering.”

“Sorry.”

“It was interesting,“ says Regulus, because that is the truth. “Perhaps you can tell me more history, another time.”

“Yes,” says Hermione, her cheeks flushed pink. “I will.”

“And then nobody has to bore me with it. Excellent,” says Ron. “Coming? Minnie’s looking stressed.”

“It’s because you’re here,” says Hermione. Regulus thinks that is a joke.

“Excuse me,” Ron says in a tone of mock-outrage, as they go over to meet Minerva and Andromeda, “I was, in school, the least troublesome of my siblings.”

“Percy?”

“Was irritating as fuck,” Ron pronounces gravely, “because I bet she had to keep telling him to keep his nose out of where it didn’t belong. ‘Yes, Weasley,’” he continues, in a passable mock-up of Minerva’s voice, “‘I can see that you think I should do that, but, kindly, keep your beak out.’ He’d have had a thousand ideas a week on how the school could be improved, and I bet he didn’t keep them to himself.”

“No, he did not,” says Minerva, clearly having heard, “but at least he did not manage to get himself knocked out by a giant chess set while trespassing beneath the school, or chased by a herd of Acromantula while trespassing, he did not arrive at school in a stolen, illegal flying car, nor did he break into the Chamber of Secrets, causing a teacher to be Obliviated.”

“Twice,” says Ron. “I think you’ll find I broke into the Chamber of Secrets twice.”

“I was merely running through your first two years,” Minerva says, “but I can do the later years if you like.”

“You didn’t even like that teacher,” Ron mutters. “Frankly Oblivation improved him.”

The light, bright tone that Ron is trying so hard to cultivate evaporates once out of the underground station and into the world. They trudge as one group several streets away from the station, and then negotiate the complex art of splitting into groups. Regulus is, of course, in the group of three, owing to his lack of a wand. Andromeda and Hermione accompany him. They try to look as if they blend into the background, three more Muggles wandering the streets of London. Hermione takes Polyjuice Potion in an alley. They don’t have enough for all of them.

“Alright, Jack?” Hermione asks. They use fake names, of course, because Regulus and Andromeda and Minerva and Hermione are memorable. Ron says that his name you’d just expect him to be two decades older, but he uses a fake one, too. His always have long, elaborate back-stories (“Ben,” he had said, “is complicated. He wants to be a good husband, but he just can’t seem to manage it.”). Regulus is merely Jack.

“Fine,” says Regulus. “You?”

“Never gets any less terrifying,” she says. “Look.” Andromeda, on the other side of the road, is signalling.

They dodge a bus and a motorbike and cross the road, Hermione pulling Regulus along by the hand. Andromeda says nothing but points them into an alleyway, and from there down a second, wider alleyway between the backs of two lines of buildings. The ground is dirty, littered with rubbish and what looks like it could be human waste. Regulus sidesteps that. Hermione still drags him by the hand, her face set and determined.

“They’re here,” Andromeda says. She’s stopped twenty or so feet from the end of the alleyway, which, ahead, turns into a busy road, and is facing the wall. On it is scrawled a symbol in a lurid shade of green, three lines and the wonky outline of a cat.

“Of course,” said Hermione, “they’ve disguised it as a tag.”

“A tag?”

“Graffiti. There’s loads of them, look, people spray paint all over the walls in London, and some of it’s art, like Banksy, do you know who Banksy is? And some of it’s just people putting their tag - that’s like a name, a street name or a gang name or something - and they’ve disguised it as that. So where do you think we go from here?” she asks Andromeda.

“My guess,” says Andromeda, turning her back on the graffiti, “is north.” She pulls out the phone from her pocket. Regulus is still rather confused by these items, despite the fact that he has one in his pocket, but they seem to be proving of use to the others. She taps on it several times, it making a series of beeping sounds, and then shoves it back into her pocket. “Three lines, and they’re taking us north, I think.”

“How do you know that?” Regulus asks. Andromeda’s off already, stalking ahead, her jacket zipped to the top. 

“The cat’s been a symbol for a while,” Hermione explains, as they follow in Andromeda’s wake. “I think it’s actually a representation of Minerva, because she killed our last little problem, but your cousin’s people began looking for it and so it wasn’t used for a while. It seems dangerous to be using it again, but there we are. It’s helpful right now.”

“Doesn’t that mean this could be a trap?” Regulus asks. He’s not sure he does sound anything like the others, even when he tries for his way of speaking to be less conspicuous.

“Yeah,” says Hermione, grimly. “Glad you’ve noticed that. I mean,” she continues, running a little to keep up, “everyone has, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do it.” She glances up at him, and Regulus wishes she was still holding his hand. He doesn’t have time to analyse that. “Andromeda and Minerva don’t think you should go inside, when we get there. I’m not saying I agree with them, but I’m letting you know.”

“Do you agree with them?” she hadn’t said she didn’t, either.

Hermione doesn’t say anything for a moment, disguising her silence as crossing a road. 

“I don’t know,” she says. “You haven’t got a wand. You’re out of practice at almost everything, not that that’s your fault. But, Ron’s right. None of us would like it if we were left behind.” She glances over her shoulder. “Nobody’s following us.”

“Good,” says Regulus, who had not, in truth, been looking for that sort of thing at all. Perhaps he should not be here. There is no danger, no immediate danger, at any rate, and yet his heart pounds as it had done when he walked into Voldemort’s cave. He had been walking to his death, in significant real danger, and yet here he walked along a street in London, not chased, not facing Inferi, merely solving a puzzle. 

“You’re going to be okay,” says Hermione, feeling for his hand again. “Breathe. I used to feel like this too, you know. Still do. When we came to find Minerva, well, I had my heart in my throat the whole time. Bravery’s ninety percent an act, Ron reckons, and he’s right. There’s a whole school of thought that it isn’t even being brave if you’re not terrified, it’s just stupidity then.”

Regulus squeezes her hand; he does not know what to say. 

They catch up with Ron and Andromeda outside a small shop on the corner of two streets, and they continue on in a group. They think they know where it is they are going, and they confer amongst themselves at regular opportunities. Every so often, Regulus catches sight of lines in lurid green paint, every so often accompanied by the outline of a cat. They turn from street to street. Andromeda buys five cakes from a bakery on one street, and Minerva buys bottles of water from a shop on another. Ron takes Regulus into a clothes shop, they buy nothing, but have a staged conversation about scarves.

Nobody’s following them, but they do this anyway, like they’ve had to do this for years.

Eventually Andromeda stops outside of somewhere that isn’t a shop. “Here,” she says. “This is it.”

“Are you coming with us?” Minerva asks, and Regulus, his palms sweaty, realises she’s talking to him.

“Yes,” he says. What other answer could he give? Ron and Hermione flank him on either side, and there’s no evidence this is a trap, and, besides, Hermione had said nobody was going to die today. Regulus believes her. 

“Very well. Andromeda?” 

Andromeda considers the metal box in the wall in front of her, then carefully presses the button labelled 143c. It buzzes a few times, then a voice speaks from the metal.

“Come up.”

“On our way,” says Andromeda.

They enter, walking past a door that proclaims itself to belong to Arthur Morrigan, BDS, MFDSRCS, up the stairs, and onto a corridor covered in tiles that are made out of carpet on the floor and tiles made out of something that looks to be cork on the walls. Regulus is wondering just what, exactly, is the Muggle preoccupation with tiles, because these cannot be easy to clean, when Andromeda raps on the door numbered 143c. It opens, and Andromeda’s dragged inside by her jacket. Minerva follows, and Ron, and Hermione, and therefore so does Regulus.

The door clicks shut behind them, and a woman with long dark hair and a wand stands between Regulus and his exit. He begins to breath faster, he feels for Hermione’s hand and finds nothing but cork tiled wall and Ron’s leg, and then the dark-haired woman has her wand in his face.

“Prove yourselves.” she says.


	6. 143c

Hermione’s glad to see Parvati again, of course she is, and it makes absolute sense that Parvati is holding them at wandpoint, given the situation, but Hermione backs into the wall anyway. Ron’s raised his own wand, as has Andromeda. She’d be lying if she said she hadn’t thought about going for hers, but, at this point, it’s needless escalation. It’s Parvati.

“Prove yourself,” says Parvati again. “Prove who you are and that you’re on our side.”

“Hermione Granger,” Hermione says. “When we were eleven, you gave me your cuddly rabbit on the first night at Hogwarts, because I was homesick. We’re on your side.” Hermione tries her best to sound sincere, to look non-threatening. “After the Yule Ball you told me you still sort-of fancied Harry, even though he’d been a twat.”

Parvati softens, just slightly. She looks like she might want to run and hug Hermione, but she turns her wand on Ron, instead. They prove their credentials in turn, or four of them do, anyway. When Parvati points her wand at Regulus, Hermione feels the urge to step in.

“Regulus Black,” he says, calmly. “You do not know me, but I am willing to fight with anyone who fights against my cousin.”

“Regulus Black is dead,” Parvati says, firmly. “Next time, pick a fake name that doesn’t belong to someone we all know died thirty years ago.” Her wand doesn’t move on to the next person, and neither does her fierce glare. Hermione tries to step in, save the situation, but Regulus is already talking. He looks calm and collected; Hermione’s heart’s somewhere in her throat.

“Death was somewhat of a temporary state,” says Regulus, which, Hermione thinks, is actually fairly unhelpful. “I am alive. I am afraid I lack ways to prove my identity, save for my blood.”

“Nobody’s getting any blood out,” says Ron, probably unnecessarily. 

“Can you vouch for him?” Parvati asks, keeping her wand trained on Regulus but looking at Hermione and Ron.

“Yes.”

“Fine. If he kills us…” Parvati lets the threat hang and lowers her wand. “Come on. No point hanging around in the corridor. I was just about to make a cup of tea.”

They follow her into the, well, it isn’t a flat, it’s an office building that’s being used as everything but an office. The walls are covered in woodchip wallpaper and painted an off-white shade, the floor the same carpet tiles as outside. The main waiting area, which Parvati leads them into, contains floor-to-ceiling windows covered by battered long blinds, a set of brown sofas and chairs which have clearly seen better days, and a single, wonky tree in a pot.

On one of the sofas, next to the window, is a man, Hermione’s fairly sure it’s Lee Jordan, tucked half into a sleeping back, eyes shut. He leaps up when he hears people, waving his wand like a sword, eyes only half open. Ron draws his wand, Regulus goes for a wand he doesn’t have, and Hermione tries to grab at both of their arms.

“They’re safe,” says Parvati, at the same time as Hermione says “he’s safe, it’s Lee, Ron, look.”

“Don’t pull a wand on me, Lee, you twat,” says Ron, and approaches to wrap Lee in a hug. 

“You’re the twat,” Lee replies, extracting himself from the puddle of sleeping bag that’s formed around his feet. “Sneaking up on me like that.”

“Should learn how to listen better, even in your sleep.”

“Sit down, you idiot. Why are you here? How did you find us? Fucking hell, is that Hermione?” He sits down. “Professor McGonagall?”

“Minerva. And, besides, rumours of my capture are greatly exaggerated, as you can see.” Minerva sits down. “We found you by the clues you left, which, presumably, is what you wanted.”

“Didn’t think you would.” Lee shakes his head. Parvati comes back into the room with a teapot on a tray, and a collection of mugs. “Thanks, Parvati.”

Small talk in wartime is a strange thing, Hermione thinks. Her parents used to have dinner parties, where they’d all sit around and talk about what had gone on in their lives since they had last seen each other. Someone would have had a promotion, or their daughter would have been admitted to Cambridge, or their son was due to become a father. They’d have been on holiday to Norfolk or Paris or Canada. Normal, everyday things. The updates they shared between them now were of an entirely different kind. How many times had they narrowly evaded capture? Who was dead? Who was alive?

“Still no news on Remus?” Lee asks. “Had to shut down the radio show with both him and Kingsley gone.”

“None,” says Andromeda. “We’ve tried to trace what we can of his last known movements, and we suspect he was captured.”  
“Bastards,” says Parvati, fiercely. 

“Indeed.” Minerva puts down her teacup, and this seems to signal that the catch-up is over. “What are the rumours of the protests we are hearing? You are the people involved in that, yes?”

“Yes and no,” says Parvati. “We’ve ben trying to go along to any meetings, but I don’t think we even know everything of what’s going on. There’s one this afternoon. Coming?”

“Of course,” says Andromeda. 

They set off in pairs; Lee and another boy that’s living with them, Parvati and Ron, Andromeda and Regulus, Hermione and Minerva. They’d argued again about whether Regulus should be allowed to come. He hasn’t got a wand, no, but there isn’t going to be any drama, there’s going to be a meeting and then they’ll all go home into safety. Nobody is going to die today.

“I’m not entirely convinced about this,” says Minerva, as they leave, the second of the pairs to go.

“Neither am I,” Hermione admits.

 

———

 

The meeting, which seems to be the only thing anyone refers to it as, is held in the basement room of a pub. This is a terrible idea on so many levels, Hermione thinks. The disguise for their presence is weak, with a banner on the door proclaiming it to be Shirley’s thirtieth birthday party and a handful of lacklustre balloons being about their only commitment to the disguise. Not that the barman seems to care. He waves Hermione and Minerva through the doors and down the stairs with a grunt and a point.

“There isn’t a way out,” says Hermione. Minerva nods. 

“A basement,” says Ron, finding them as they enter, Regulus in tow. He doesn’t look nervous, but Hermione knows he is. And she knows he’s thinking the same thing as she is. There isn’t a way out. There’s no windows, just a pool table covered with battered chipboard, pillars blocking anyone from having full visibility of the room, and the leather chairs and dark, fake-wood tables of a cheap pub.

“We’ll stay by the door,” Hermione decides. Nobody suggests anything different.

 

———

 

Of course it was going to be a disaster. Hermione can barely see anyone else that she knows, between the people and the smoke and what smells like fire. She hopes they remember the emergency plans. 

The emergency plans say to retreat, go back to the assigned safe points by any available means, including Apparition, if it comes to it. The plans are not to become tangled into anything, not to fight, not to draw wands if they can help it. Hermione’s got her wand out already. She’s crouched behind the remains of a brick wall, and she’s assessing how best she can help. Stuffing the plan to the back of her mind is easy. Helping is significantly harder.

Ron’s the only one she can see. He’s a few feet ahead of her, unreachable, shouting obscenities at one of Bellatrix’s followers in between curses. He catches her eye as he ducks a curse fired straight at him, and casts a shield charm out to his side, covering both himself and the woman next to him, who’s clutching her wand more like a shield than an offensive weapon. She needs to get out of here. She’s not prepared. Most of them aren’t.

Hermione’s assumption that this was a crowd of people who didn’t know what they were doing is, unfortunately, completely accurate. She realises this as she has to leap in to protect a pair who can’t seem to cast much more than defensive spells, and they’re not strong enough, their spells are weak and wavering with the fear of the casters. She casts her own shield charm as she leaps in front of them.

“Get out of here!” she shouts. “Go!”

They don’t move. She can’t hear what they’re saying over the din, maybe they can’t hear her. She backs towards them, glaring her opposition down as she tries to maintain the Shield Charm against the barrage of spells.

“Run!” she shouts. They still don’t. “This is fucking dangerous! You’ll die, you’ll be captured, they’ll mark your fucking families for death, don’t you see? Don’t you understand?”

“We’re standing with you,” says one of them, defiantly. “We won’t go.” The other looks less convinced, but, finally, manages to cast something of use. It’s a Stunner, it won’t do much long-term good, but one of their opponents crashes to the floor with a thud.

“Get somewhere more sheltered, then! You’ll be more use there!” 

Thankfully they see the sense in that. They run, and that frees Hermione up to try to get to Ron, except he’s disappeared. There’s no head of ginger hair anywhere in this fight, and they’re out of Polyjuice, so where is he? No, Hermione can’t think about that. He’s alive, he’s safe, he’s fine; he has to be.

She tries to get through, running between people fighting and fleeing and everything else. Twice, three times, she sees someone captured, being spirited away to Merlin knows where. None of them are Ron, or Regulus, or Minerva or Andromeda. Not that this makes her feel any better. They’re still people, aren’t they, they’re still people on her side, and she can’t see any of her friends at all. Hermione does her best to look for them, but, honestly, she’s under attack from all angles and she’s got to stay alive.

She finds Regulus first. He’s got no wand, she remembers, she should have remembered that before. Instead he’s wielding a thick piece of wood like a beater’s bat, using it alternately to block spells and to try and clobber nearby opponents. He’s got a brick in the other hand, which he throws at someone’s feet. It distracts them, and a witch nearby casts a spell that downs the wizard.

“Well done,” she says, finally fighting her way through to where he is. He crouches down for another brick. He looks grim. “You’re doing well,” she says.

“Ron and I practiced,” he says, launching a second brick into the fight while Hermione casts a Shield Charm to cover the pair of them. “Not with bricks. Not in the flat.” 

Hermione still can’t see Ron. And her glance round the street confirms not just that, but that they’re losing, too. This was fucking predictable, this disaster. More of the people on their side are leaving than are fighting, now, either under their own steam or taken away by Bellatrix’s side.

“We should leave,” she says. 

“Why?”

The wizard raises himself from the floor, and Regulus swings his block of wood towards him again. It shatters on a well-timed spell, and Hermione’s return fire goes wide as he lurches towards the pair of them, wand raised and angry. Hermione tries again, and two more spells miss him. Regulus ducks a Killing Curse, dragging Hermione down with him, then raises himself and punches the wizard square on the nose. He crashes to the ground again, and Regulus drops too, on purpose, as a curse whizzes over his head and misses him by not even an inch.

“We’ve got to leave,” said Hermione. The street is emptying, this is their last chance, and Regulus is scrabbling around on the floor, dust and dirt on his jeans.

“Alright.” He turns back to her. “How?”

The only answer Hermione gives is to grab his elbow and Apparate, to the first place she thinks of. There’s a bus stop twenty feet down the street, and Hermione runs for it as a bus pulls up. If Regulus is confused by any of this, he doesn’t show it, accepting the TravelCard she shoves at him, and following her to a seat by the back doors.

“What was that?” Regulus asks.

“Not here,” Hermione hisses. They sit on the bus in silence as it rumbles along until it reaches a bus stop Hermione recognises, one that’s sufficiently busy. Just as the doors close, she grabs Regulus’ arm and they get off, immediately trying to lose themselves in the rest of the travellers.

“Do you think we are being followed?” Regulus twists out of her grip to try to turn around, so Hermione grabs him again.

“Don’t know. Can’t assume we’re not. They can track Apparition, same as they can our wand use."

“Alright.”

A few streets away, the area around them much less busy now, they stop. Hermione goes into a side-street, and Regulus follows, eyes on stalks. 

Hermione grabs him by the elbow when he slows down and pulls him over towards the wall, swinging him around so his back’s up against it and she’s between him and the road. Physically, he looks mostly fine. A long, jagged cut, some kind of curse wound, winds up his arm, though not a severe one. She could have healed it instantly if she’d been able to risk magic. The rest of him is battered and slightly grimy, his sleeve torn where the cut is, his jeans covered in a black, tar-like substance. He’ll attract attention in the street, and not of a good sort.

It’s the first chance they’ve had to assess their surroundings. London, not far from where they started, they’ve done a loop around from where they got off the bus to just behind a high street. Hermione’s been here before. There’s a man with a dog on the other side of the street, and a woman walks down their side with her hands in her pockets. Hermione pretends to be looking for something in her bag as the woman approaches, her hand on her wand the entire time, and then breaths a sigh of relief when she passes without incident.

“Where are we?” Regulus asks, having first glanced around to check that the coast was clear. The man and dog are still visible, out of earshot, but the woman’s gone around a corner.

“Five minutes from where we started. Come on,” she says, grabbing him by the elbow again and marching him down towards a doorway she thinks she recognises. Her other hand is on her bag, safely in the pocket of her coat. Regulus says nothing for the entire short, forced journey, and Hermione doesn’t either. There’s nothing really to say except ‘are you alright’, and, let’s face it, they never are.

“Here,” she says, dragging him into an alcove in the wall. It’s the back door of a nightclub, and, as such, almost certainly safe enough for the next few hours. Hermione weighs it up. She’s cautious, very cautious, about breaking into buildings that may or may not be empty, but she’s also cautious about staying out on the streets, about travelling when they might have a tail. She considers asking Regulus’ opinion. He’s just looking at her like he doesn’t know what’s going on. And, honestly, this isn’t high risk. The worst case scenario is someone’s tailing them, and there’s a nasty stand-off in a nightclub, but at least that’d draw anyone out.

A few seconds and Hermione has located the pin in her pocket, and that does short work of the lock. Regulus still says nothing. He’s watching her still, now with apparently slightly more understanding of what’s going on, but still silently. Hermione wishes he’d say something, anything.

“Come on,” she says, again, as the door clicks open with a shove. This time, he follows her without needing to be dragged.

In the ladies toilets, Hermione pulls her bag out and starts finding clean clothes, and it’s now that she allows herself to think about the others. She’d seen Ron flee, and he had the Cloak, so he’s probably fine. He’ll follow the plan and get back to Kibbern Place, he’s good at this. He’s survived before. Andromeda and Minerva she didn’t see, not anywhere, and that’s a good sign, too. If she didn’t see them dead or captured, there’s still a chance they’re fine. Or that’s how Ron would think, anyway.

Hermione takes the chance to examine herself. She’s fine, much better off than she’s been in the past. There’s a small, superficial cut on her forehead, and her thigh feels like it’s going to bruise, but there’s nothing some time and a couple of the basic potions from her bag can’t fix. 

“How’s your arm?” she asks Regulus. He’s far worse off than she is. She should deal with that first, because hers can wait.

“Fine,” he says, grimacing as he moves it. 

“It isn’t. Come here.” He moves over to her immediately, stopping just far enough away that she can’t reach his arm. She steps closer. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” she decides, now she can see it properly. “There’s glass in it, though. Was it a physical cut or a curse?”

“Sliced it on a broken window.”

“That’s good.” That’s insensitive. “I mean, it’s easier to heal a non-magical cut without wandwork.”

“Yes.”

“Rest it on the tiles,” she says, pointing at the thin counter running along the bottom of the biggest mirror. It’s for putting your bag on while you touch up your make-up, but it’ll do for this as well. While he hopefully does as he’s told, Hermione turns her back and looks for the right things in her bag. Everything’s been upended in the fight, it always is, and it makes finding the smaller things a nightmare.

“Like this?” he asks.

“Perfect,” she says. She hasn’t looked. She’s sure it’s fine.

“Yes, I can see the glass in it now,” he says.

He’s peering down at it when she turns back around, but looks up at the sound of movement. His eyes widen, probably at the tweezers, she reckons.

“It’s alright,” she says. “They’re to get the glass out, because I can’t use a spell.”

“I see.” His eyes haven’t relaxed. “I’ve never seen those before.”

“Tweezers,” she explains. They hover over his arm, and Regulus’ eyes follow their progress. She steps closer, has another look, and decides it’s going to be as straightforward as these things can be. “Are you ready?”

“I’m not afraid.” Their eyes meet. Hermione resists the urge to look down at his arm - they’re close, probably too close, but she can hardly do this from further away. She can’t decide if he looks uncomfortable. “I’m not afraid,” he repeats, and he’s the one to look away first, down at his arm. “You’re welcome to start when you are ready.”

“You don’t have to look.”

“No. I don’t,” he says, in the tone of someone who’s going to insist on looking, whether they’re comfortable or not.

“Do you want a potion for the pain?”

“No.”

It’s as straightforward as Hermione expects it to be, except for the fact that she’s being watched. Regulus, as she expected, seems to see it as a personal failure if he doesn’t watch the progress. And, frankly, it’s distracting. She’s not looking at him, not really, because she’s got enough to be looking at as she lifts glass out of his arm and onto some paper towel she's appropriated from the dispenser, but she can feel his eyes watching nonetheless. Occasionally he lets out a slightly heavier breath, but he doesn’t twitch or make any other noise that could be interpreted as a complaint. She’s pulling glass out of his arm without any pain potion, or any local anaesthetic, or anything, for heaven’s sake, he shouldn’t be this composed. He shouldn’t be so stubborn.

“I’m not going to think anything less of you if you want something for the pain.” Hermione doesn’t pause as she talks, but she works around the largest piece. It’s wedged itself in under undamaged skin at the end of the cut, by his wrist, and she’s going to have to manoeuvre it out carefully if she doesn’t want to cut it any further. Blood seeps from his arm, and she dabs at it with another piece of green towel.

“I do not need anything.”

“It doesn’t hurt to make things easier for yourself.”

“I said,” he says, his voice clipped with irritation, “that I am fine.”

“Suit yourself.”

If he’s going to be like that, she decides not to warn him as she goes for the biggest piece, the last one left in his arm. Instead she presses against his skin with a piece of green towel in one hand, and, with her other, reaches in with the tweezers. Regulus exhales as she wiggles it, and makes no noise at all when it comes loose. Hermione fights the urge to feel unimpressed at that. It isn’t some sort of competition.

“Done,” she says. “I’m going to seal it now, but I’ve got a potion for that.”

“Okay.”

Hermione thinks of several things she could say, mostly about it being absolutely fine to show your emotions and how refusing painkillers is closer to stupidity than bravery, but she merely dabs potion onto his arm. The liquid fizzes against the edges of the cut and does its work, leaving a thin, silvery scar behind. Satisfied, she bundles the paper and glass and blood into a plastic sandwich bag, and uses the alcohol gel from her bag to clean the area.

“What are you doing?” Regulus asks, having finished surveying her work on his arm.

“You can use blood in Polyjuice Potion,” she explains. If he’s read the book she suggested he read, he’d know that. “Most people don’t, it’s not really seen as socially acceptable, but then look at who we’re fighting against.”

“My cousin.”

“Yes.” Satisfied with the cleanliness, Hermione dabs some of the potion onto her own injury, checking it again in the grimy, scratched mirror. “She’s not exactly known for fighting fair.”

Regulus says nothing. Hermione decides it’s time to get changed. For one thing, they’ll attract attention walking through London dressed like they’ve been fighting, and, for another, it’s uncomfortable. She splashes water at her face, first, then grabs a bundle of her clothes and heads for a cubicle. 

“I’m getting changed,” she says to Regulus, who nods. “Keep guard, and I’ll find some clean stuff for you when I’m done.”

He’s in clean jeans and a navy shirt when they’re done, and Hermione’s wearing some sort of jumper dress. It’s less practical than she’d choose, but it’ll blend in better with early evening in this part of London, and they’re not getting into any more fights. She’s dealt with her hair, too, trying to make herself look less like she'd been dragged through a hedge backwards. She finds a pocket for her wand, and packs everything back into her bag. Regulus stares at the closed, unmoving door.

“We’ll wait here half an hour,” she says, talking as much to herself as she is to Regulus, who's still watching the door when she’s finished, and doesn’t seem to be paying any attention to whatever she’s doing. “We don’t want to stay too long, someone might arrive to set up for the evening and I’d rather be out before that, but we should give ourselves a minute. We’ll have to leave carefully, I don't think we've been followed, though, and then we can get the bus to the nearest station and the tube home, I think.” 

Entirely unsurprisingly, Regulus says nothing at all. 

There clearly isn’t going to be a conversation, so Hermione digs in her bag again for her Tube map. It’s better to have a route plan now, before they leave, than be scrabbling it together as they’re heading into the Underground. And a back-up route, she thinks, looking for her bus timetable. Just in case they see something suspicious near the station.

“You’re very prepared.”

“We have to be.” She’s got the bus timetable out and spread out next to the Tube map, both of them lightly annotated in pencil. “Things go wrong if you don’t plan them.”

“Like today?”

“Pretty much.”

That’s unfair, Hermione decides, but she's said it now. Well, perhaps not unfair, but it isn’t her fault, or any of their’s. Or maybe it is. Maybe they should have tried to make more contact with other groups, tried to help them work out how to do something safer.

“I see. It seems to me that things are as bad as I’ve been told.”

Hermione bites her lip rather than replying. Of course they’re as bad as they’re telling him. Minerva had wanted to ease him in slowly, but they’d tried to tell him the truth. Because eventually this would have happened, he’d walk outside the flat and into a fight and find some kind of shit, and he’d have to fight it.

“We’ll have to get you a wand,” she says.

“No need.” He pulls one out of his jeans pocket, managing to make even that simple action look somehow awkward. “I do not know precisely if punching somebody and then stealing their wand satisfies the wand’s need to be won, but I suppose we shall find out.”

“Who’s it from?” Hermione thinks about the question. “It should work like that. Unfortunately we won’t have much chance to test it until we’re in an emergency situation.”

“No. I suppose not.” He grimaces. “I have to admit I’m not entirely sure. The wizard I was fighting when you found me, I think, unless he was carrying another wand.”

“That doesn’t help,” Hermione says, automatically, and Regulus flinches. “Sorry.” She’d have said that to Ron and he wouldn’t have said anything, or said something vaguely mick-taking back. “A lot of them look like that, but it isn’t your fault. Difficult to see what’s going on in a big fight sometimes, isn’t it?”

“I suppose. I managed to avoid most of them, even in my previous life.”

“Is it strange? Fighting on our side, I mean.” He flinches again. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No,” he says, and deliberately seems to rearrange his face to look as if he’s entirely comfortable with what’s going on. He isn’t. He stands stiffly over by the wall, a safe distance from Hermione, and still holds the stolen wand in his hand like it’s going to explode. He glances towards the door and the window and Hermione herself all with equal discomfort, and when he isn’t looking at those, he’s looking at the mud on his trainers. “No. You are welcome to ask. We are on the same side, and I cannot pretend I’m not expecting you to ask these sorts of questions.”

“It isn’t that we don’t trust you,” Hermione begins. He starts to talk over the top of her. 

“I don’t think you don’t trust me,” he says.

“We trust you.” A pause, where nobody says anything. “We like you.”

He says nothing. He looks at his trainers. Hermione glances at her bus timetable, because just staring at him is, as Ron would say, bloody awkward.

“What bus do we get on?”

“What?”

“The bus.” Another pause. “You’re looking at a bus timetable.”

“I am. The bus is the back-up plan. I think we should get the Tube, if we can, it’s quicker.”

“Alright.” He says that with the exact same tone as Ron does, as if he’s trying to copy the other man. Hermione, at this point, wouldn’t be surprised if his next words were bloody hell, or seriously mate, or something else that sounded exactly like one of Ron’s verbal tics. He’s even dressed like Ron, although that’s probably because they only collectively own that one style of men’s clothes. 

He looks as awkward as Ron did when he was trying to… oh, bloody hell.

“We all like you,” says Hermione, which makes her, finally, become the more awkward person in the room. Regulus, who’d been moving towards her, stops. 

“I like all of you,” he says. “I admire your principles. That you’ve all kept fighting for this even when it’s like, well, it is like it was today.”

Hermione’s heart sinks. She doesn’t want to examine why, not in a scuzzy club toilet in a dicey part of London.

“It’s what I’ve always done.”

Regulus shuffles. “I know. I find it somewhat impressive. That you have been so certain of the right path for so long.”

Her mirror starts to shake in her pocket as she thinks of what to say, so she answers it. Ron’s on the other end, one black eye, but unharmed.

“Hermione!”

“Ron! I’m fine!" she begins, whispering into the mirror. Regulus walks over to the window and pretends he’s looking out of it, like he’s giving her privacy or something. There’s nothing particularly private about this conversation with Ron. Hermione confirms he’s alive, that he thinks Minerva and Andromeda are alive, and that he’s not being chased by anyone. 

“We’re safe, too,” she says, again, as Ron’s eyebrows furrow into the mirror. “Regulus was a bit injured, but he’s fine, now. We were just giving it half an hour before we left, just to be on the safe side.”

“Good idea,” says Ron, his voice tinny though the mirror. “Be safe, yeah?”

“Yeah. You too.”

Ron grins. “When do I do anything unsafe?”

“Constantly.” She can’t help but smile, too. “See you at home.” She snaps the mirror shut as Ron’s hand reaches up to do the same thing. “Regulus? Are you ready?”

He’s still looking out the window. “If you are,” he says, stepping away from it. “How is Ron?”

“He’s fine. Which probably means he’s bleeding, but trying to stop us from worrying. He’s never been any use at magical wound repair.” She should buy plasters, she thinks, because even Ron can use plasters. “He’s good at getting out of trouble, though.”

“You are close,” Regulus remarks, as they move towards the door together. He twists the handle as Hermione reaches for it, and steps out into the corridor first, stolen wand bared. 

“Yes,” says Hermione, drawing her own wand, too. It’s a violation of the Statute, of course, which means less and less with every passing year. Some days she’s certain Bellatrix only keeps the Statute so she can use it to punish Muggleborns. “We’ve known each other since we were eleven. He and Harry, they’re the best friends I’ve ever had. Only, for years.” 

They reach the outside door, painted black on this side, chipped, with a neon sign above proclaiming that it’s an emergency exit. Hermione slides the bolt back, pulls the annotated tube map from her bag, and turns to Regulus.

“If we get separated, the route home’s on that.”

He pockets it silently, saying nothing about how it’s over-planning like Harry would have, or without making some stupid joke like Ron would. He nods.

“Ready when you are,” he says, evenly.

And with that they slip back out onto the streets of London.

It’s busier than it was. Most of the people on the pavement head for the buses or the tube, like they do, bags slung over their shoulders on their way home from work. Small groups assemble outside pubs, laughing about stupid thing as they make their way inside to the bar. Nobody notices Hermione and Regulus as anything out of the ordinary. They barely notice them at all. Something that proves to be a problem inside the station, as the crowd of commuters thickens and Hermione and Regulus are nearly separated several times.

“Excuse me,” Hermione calls to a group of suited men around her age, who are less concerned by fighting the forces of evil and more by the girls they might meet in the pub in the West End they’re trying to get to. “Excuse me, please.”

Reunited with Regulus, she grabs his hand. It’s logical, she reminds herself, to do this. It’s a way of keeping them together, and one nobody’s going to think anything of if they see it. Regulus says nothing about it, of course. He also doesn’t pull away. But then, he can see it’s logical too, this is, and that it makes complete tactical sense.

So logical, that Hermione gets to the front door of 37 Kibbern Place and realises they’re still holding hands, even though the streets have been deserted for at least half a mile.


End file.
